Year 1 Sem 2 Week 15


Hi guys, I honestly am too tired to do anything else besides stoning on my sofa which I have been doing for the past 5 hours or so. Not kidding. I'm still in the attire that I wore to school for my last exam in the morning. I'm really honestly very very exhausted. I guess, I've aged TREMENDOUSLY ever since I stepped into uni. 4 hours of travelling to and fro school is seriously no joke but to save money, I'd willingly do so.

So,my finals ended today, FINALLY, after more than a week, when every uni kid has ended his paper while I was the only few left mugging our asses out to save our CAP. So this was my exam schedule:
GEK1538- 28 April, 1PM
SSA2215- 29 April, 1PM
GE2229- 5 May, 9AM
GE2204- 7 Mary, 9AM

Though I only had 4 papers, my friends who had 5 or more papers ended their papers earlier than me, what a fked up timetable I've got. In sem 1, my papers were consecutive, like Monday to Friday at 9am every single day, tiring and demanding I know,but at least the pain was shortlived.And at least everyone didn't have the extra time to mug and bridge the gap whatsoever. I thought it would be better to have a more spaced out timetable and so I took modules that did not have double exams on a single day BUT this was what I got, the torture of seeing everyone celebrating end of finals while I was busy stuffing my brain with tons of info that did not help at all.

Sem 2 was a fked up sem on the whole.If given a chance,I would rather work or go overseas to study or repeat sem 1 twice just to skip sem 2. The only stuffs that kept me insane throughout sem 2 was my good buddies be they my secondary school friends/JC friends/Uni friends,and I am really grateful to have them around though I don't usually express it in front of their faces. It was one hell of a sem that I could barely breathe, I didn't watch much dramas as compared to sem 1,I could barely use up my 10 fingers to count the number of dramas I watched in sem 2 needless to say, stepping out of the house for shopping or entertainment. My life throughout sem 2 was just eat, sleep, study, school, travel, study, eat, sleep,CCA on weekends and back to reality, and not to forget PROJECTS for the 10 out of 15 weeks. Sad life I know, but are there any other choices? No.Being in this god damn rat race, it meant that I CAN'T STOP EVEN FOR A SPLIT SECOND cos other people will overtake me SOON.I kept hearing people saying uni life is the best stage of education cos we are free to do anything we like and not worry about preparing for entrance exams since it's the last stage of our education journey.But hey, what about getting a job in future?In today's society, purely mugging and getting straight As is definitely insufficient to get you a good desirable job so in order to stand out, we need to be all-rounders, as if studying is not hard enough.

Haizzzzzzzzzzzzz I can go on and on complaining about the darn education system but I'm just too tired to do so.My laptop's key board is super screwed,it's darn fking hard to type and I really hope to get rid of it asap though it is just 3 years old.

I'm honestly very drained right now, though it's the long-awaited end of finals reflections post,I don't feel happy at all,given what happened during today's paper and I honestly some damn NUS exams board staff will come across this post.Today,during the 9am paper at MPSH 1A, 2 fucking phone's alarm rang and it rang damn loudly that even though I sat right in the middle,I could hear the phone blaring fucking loudly.I'm sure the people at the side would've been affected much more than me but honestly,we paid so much tuition fees to the school and yet you guys can't even set a fking rule just like how SEAB does?!!!!!I've fking emailed them last sem over the same issue and today, history repeated.I sincerely have no idea when this whole nonsense is going to carry on but if NUS doesn't intend to take any proper actions to ensure fairness of off candidates,then I think this isn't a uni that is worth all the rave and hype,it's just a one sided judgement instead of a holistic one,and NUS in fact is a uni that doesn't treat exams standards as the way a good uni should do.It may seem a small issue to those staffs whom ignored my emails over this issue but to us,we want our hardwork to pay off,all we want is to have a fair,conducive place to sit for our papers and get the grade that we deserve and not being fucked up by NUS poor management and selfish NUS idiots.

Enough of the darn school I am in,I really don't feel a sense of belonging there any more,at least not like when I first got into this school and everyone was congratulating me,telling me how hard it is to get into NUS and how 'great' NUS is honestly,you've gotta experience it yourself to know the reality.

So these are my modules review for sem 2, hopefully it will help people intending to take these mods in the future:


GEK1538 (Plants and Society) offered by School of Biological Sciences.
I took this because first, a Year 4 senior of mine introduced and encouraged me to take this as she took it and found it interesting and quite manageable. She was the senior whom I was grouped with in the GEK1515 project earlier in sem 1 and since we somewhat shared the same interests, taking sciency gems,I decided to seek her opinions. Second, I wanted to take GEK1064 some psych gem with Melissa but we couldn't get it cause the bidding point was too damn high and I couldn't afford it with my pathetic G account so forget it but there weren't many gem mods left that we were both interested in yet able to fit into our timetables and GEK1538 happened to be the only one so we took it together. I find it quite useful, in the sense that we get to know the effects of plants like fungi on human's health, the scientific names like Oryza Sativa for rice and the biological terms of plant parts, wasn't really easy given that it was super dry and there were lots of pharmacy students taking it so it was kinda competitive I think.For my sem, there was a compulsory 16 mark individual essay which I did well in, same mark as Melissa, attendance score which I believe everyone got full marks, a group project which I think was averagely done and a 40% finals. The MCQs for finals were alright just 1 or 2 questions that I was unsure but it was the short questions that killed most people. But Im glad that I'm from Arts and I managed to smoke some stuffs out of the things that I could remember.Not really an easy mod,doesn't look like it's a Level 1000 mod to me,more like 2000 but I'm glad I cleared a second science gem to fulfil my graduation requirements:) Level of difficulty: 3/5. Expected grade: B+

GE2101 (Methods and Practices in Geography) offered by Department of Geography.
Took this with my fellow geoggers cos we didn't have a choice.It is one of the compulsory prescribed geog modules that we have to pass in order to major in geography. Sad life, just when I thought I'm finally free from the wrath of maths....I struggled a lot to understand the content and the HK accent of my prof,I had some issues with my project mates (we had a 30% project work where group members were selected by the prof)  but we eventually sorted them out and worked very hard and got a really good grade. Not very good,but way above other groups and I'm really thankful for.The group project score was released just weeks before our finals and it was a mental boost for me to work really hard.This mod is 100% CA based, no finals, another 20% was from a MCQ quiz and 50% CA which everyone got quite similar marks so I guess the project was the differentiator. Level of difficulty: 3/5. Expected grade: A

GE2204 (Cities in Transition) offered by Department of Geography.
This is one of the social/cultural geog mods that I have to take to clear my major's requirements.I took it with some of my Redioactive OG mates and I was quite happy with that since I'm not doing that mod alone and judging from the module description and title, I thought it was going to be quite similar to the urban stuffs we learnt in JC.True, but it was more in depth and it was much wider in scope at uni level.The profs were good but not as good as the profs I had in sem 1, but nonetheless,I am the one ultimately taking the exam so this has nothing to do with the profs.Initially I enjoyed this mod,learnt a lot,and I had fun with the project. We did quite well for the 30% project but I did average for my 15% individual assignment as I couldn't comprehend the question set by one of the prof and my friends had this issue too.5% class part I guess would be down the drain since people like me don't really bother to speak up in class.50% finals which just ended few hours ago was horrible.All I can say is that the questions were much more challenging than past years' which caught me and many of my peers off guard.Am just hoping for the best. Level of difficulty: 4/5. Expected grade: B

GE2229 (Water and the Environment) offered by Department of Geography.
I took this because one of my really close geog friend planned to take it and we were like the only ones interested in physical geog modules. It was taught by a really new prof, Dr Passy who was from France and I like him a lot,not that he's really good in teaching/setting good questions/the french accent but he's really sincere, giving me the down-to-earth aura and most importantly, he's very approachable unlike other profs. Dr Passy always leaves his door open so you can consult him as and when you wish to without having to inform him beforehand. There was a 20% individual assignment which I think I did averagely, a 40% group project which I thought was alright but in the end, was below average. It totally screwed up my mood for studying this module but because I liked the prof and the content was interesting (since I'm more of a physical geog person), I studied hard for finals and hopefully it will save my grade for this mod. Level of difficulty: 3.5/5. Expected grade: B

SSA2215 (The Biophysical Environment of Singapore) offered by Department of Geography.
Was quite reluctant to take this module but I decided to take it anyway since it fit nicely into my timetable, offered by geog, is a physical geog module, good comments about it, my close friend is taking and I have to clear at least 1 SS module anyway, I don't see any reasons why I should not take this module. There was a 50% CA test after every tutorial once in 2 weeks and I did quite well for all. 2 full marks, and the 2 was 8 and one was horribly done but since I did well in the mid terms as compared to how the cohort performed, I guess it didn't really affect my overall grade.I'm quite confident with my finals too.I strongly recommend this mod only to those WITH geog background unless you have friends who loves geog/is good at geog stuffs otherwise you will end up like a lost sheep.Not joking.There's lots of jargons and tons of things to memorise,definitely not a wise choice for those without a good memory,you need SUPERB memory in fact to memorise the entire compulsory textbook.No projects,really good for us geog majors given that our mods all demand projects.Downside is prof Oliver imo was not really approachable or friendly and he was late for about 20 mins for one lecture without giving a proper reason.The marking schemes were not standardised and it annoyed me to the core when I was marked down though my answers were the same as my friends' and when I asked the lecturer for the marks the TA told me that she could only deduct my friends' marks but not add mine WTF seriously?And I decided not to jeopardise my friends' score. Seriously, this shows how 'fair' and 'transparent' NUS is. Anyway, Oliver is leaving woohoo,he's quite stuck up and we don't really like him though he really knows his info well.Oh yeah, some info in the textbook DIFFERS from those in the notes wth?As if memorising was not painful for us and we had to differentiate the 2 different info from the different sources given.


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