To be fair, though, first year of any Uni course is usually a really really dull slog just to get you to a stage where you can reasonably be asked to do more interesting stuff. And part of it's just a case of being able to work through the crap bits to open up jobs in the rest of your life which won't involve you feeling utterly braindead permanently - in fact that's probably the main thing, really. My course is often pretty gruelling, but I think that it's really worth sticking with things as easy options in the short run may really suck long term. Agreed that checking course content is a good plan though. Are you still mostly doing minerals, earth science, etc DD?
EDIT: Just read up on your course content, yeah, your first year kinda sucks. The actual palaeontology modules and the practical bits in Year 2 do look a lot more interesting though.
