NUS AY18/19 Semester 1

got my results yesterday (26 dec) and i'm really hoping it doesn't take me one entire damn semester to get this out again HAHAHAH but then again i have less mods this sem so hopefully all will be well? hahhaha

i think this sem has been a lot of questioning myself and wondering why did i make such terrible decisions and just.. idk just trying to figure life out whilst worrying non-stop about my results hais ): but i think it taught me to plan ahead, to check and do my research properly and to really know that God has an ultimate plan in the end: that He won't do anything that will ultimately harm me. although it did take me a while to find that out.. hahha

anyway i had 4 days of sch this sem, 3 of which started at 8am and knowing the night owl me, i basically killed myself la HAHAHAHAHHA i still thought i would get a better sleep schedule by doing this but NOPE it was just week after week of texting the cell grp for someone to call me at 7:30 to make sure that i was awake (':

ALSO i unknowingly overloaded cos a normal person takes 20 MCs a sem but then u can take up to 27 without having to ask for permission so idiot me took 25 MCs thinking that it was a normal load (':

Year of Study: 2
MCs: 25
Faculty: Arts and Social Sciences
Modules Taken: 

• GET1031A Computational Thinking
• LAF3201 French 3
• LAK4201 Korean 5
• NM2101 Theories of Communications and New Media
• NM2303 Fake News, Lies and Spin: How to Sift Fact from Fiction
• NM3215 Advertising Strategies

GET1031A - Computational Thinking

Grade: B-

Tutor: Mr. Oh Shun Hao

SO this mod is a pain in the ass mod that all fass students HAVE to take. like we cannot don't take it and it rly kind of sucks la tbh cos like get has many interesting mods BUT i'm forced to take this mod bc i need to apparently learn how to think in a certain way??? idk if this is the truth but the impression that i get from my teachers and stuff is that like even they dont wanna do it??? idk we were sppd to have 3 assignments but they reduced it to 2. and although i ain't complaining, my friend was telling me how it wasn't as they claimed (they said they reduced the assignments to "give us time to study for our other exams" or something along those lines) but according to her it was because they didn't write the assignment in time so they cut out one LOL 

oh! cool thing is that my y1s1 classmate was in the same tut grp AND proj grp as me!!! hahahha she was super super enthu and i felt that like since i knew her i had to be enthu-ish also LOL. so the pain of this mod is that it's like ger in that every week there's a quiz. and there's just so many things on the front page/overview (like usually where u get to access the quizzes) that it becomes difficult to find and so i missed out on one week's quiz just like that. i also forgot another wk's quiz which led me to go set my alarm to make sure i did it HAHAHA and then there're also assignments that u have to download urself and make sure u submit on time (i also submitted one of them late just like that LOL) 

oh! and it's also mostly just online lectures of which i watched probably only 1 HAHAHHAHA the rest i just downloaded the slides and read through them. 

ohkay la, enough trashing this mod. i think what i learnt was kind of interesting? but tbh i wasn't interested la so even though it was slightly interesting it wasn't something that i wanted to do?? so i couldn't really find that want to learn it properly. also no offence to my tutor but idk his class just seemed really draggy and tiring to be in rather that interesting and thought-provoking so maybe that affected also? but i wouldn't fault him la hahaha this mod's just really tiresome. he was just doing his job and explaining what there was to the mod and we just all weren't paying attention and ready to just zao from the class LOL 

for the group project, we had to come up with our own problem instance and then solve it. which is kind of annoying bc rly what do we know??? LOL so we had quite a lot of problems lor trying to come up with our problems and solutions. like our second milestone was super terrible. and idk we all felt like the feedback we got was a bit w0t cos it was just basically insults with no constructive criticism/advice on how to improve??? also didn't help my mostly my grp couldn't be bothered w this mod la HAHAHHA damn funny we all damn meh abt it HAHHA i would say our final presentation was fine. i guess the head did trash us quite a bit but we managed to quite stand our ground YAY 

Exam Format: there's no midterm or final exams THANK GOD. so really all you have to do is just your final project presentation, all the milestones, the assignments, essays and online quizzes. PLSPLSPLSPLS CHECK PROPERLY like the shit u have to do cos it's damn sian and annoying when u forget and then u just 白白 lose marks like that ): 

Recommend? if ure not an FASS student, then this is not compulsory and pls just dont take this la HAHAH there're so many other interesting mods out there pls don't waste ur get on this. i didn't have a choice. if not i wouldve taken a ton of other cool mods ): how suay am i that this shit gets implemented from MY YEAR onwards hais 

LAF3201 - French 3

Grade: B

Tutor: Ms. Hélène S.V.O. Girard

ohkay i think it's really my fault but like i was rly struggling SO HARD at the beginning of french 3. like i was rly doubting my decisions so hard and wondering why did i go through w this lpp thing when i was so terrible at learning languages. idk is it the 3 month break or just my inability to learn french but like at the beginning i was having a shit ton of trouble understanding everything and it was just really quite tiring for me lor ): i mean towards the end i ended up liking it and stuff and actually enjoying myself but then i wont be taking french 4 la. can't risk my cap for this (': probs will just try to study at home or something! like that would ever happen, knowing me HAHA

but yeah. i mean the teacher was SUPER nice. and it was such a small class so she could rly talk to all of us and yknow make sure that we knew what was gg on. but i felt rly bad cos i was so shitty at french hais. ALSO she has a rly long name so whenever i was sending an email to her, i always thought i was sending an email to 4 ppl so i kept checking and re-checking to make sure i was sending to the correct PERSON HAHHAHHA 

i mean tbh i dont really have much to say for language mods ah as usual hahha. just pls rmb to check the lesson plans so that u know when u need to hand up ur assignments and don't be like me and submit it on wk late cos i didn't even know HAHAHHA 

also i felt bad for my tchr cos she created a wa grp for us to practice and send in sentences and stuff but none of us did ))):

Exam Format: there's a midterm and final but it's during the sem and not during the exam wk. and it's just like a mini-exam? we had to do a cultural activity which for me i watched a french movie w my classmates (Je ne suis un homme facile; interesting and eye-opening movie, rly), had to record a vid of urself doing an hommage to a celebrity u liked (i did abt N again HAHAHA i basically ripped off quite a bit from my last sem script LOL DED) and then there was an oral segment where u were sppd to talk w a friend abt a subject that u choose when u enter the exam room. but u're given time to plan for it (of which i just wrote down my lines and read off it OOPS HAHAH if next time cannot prepare THEN I'M SORRY)

Recommend? like usual, it's subjective ah. but since usually french 3 is only offered in sem 1, it means that either u placement test-ed in or u had a 3 month break before french again so it'll be good to brush up on ur french skills (which i clearly did not LOL) to make sure u don't die (like me (':)

LAK4201 - Korean 5

Grade: B+

Tutor: Dr. Park Mihi

i'll admit that i started off this one with quite a complacent heart but i'm thankful that God brought me back down on earth. ohkay so firstly the lessons were 8 am on wednesday and friday so knowing the nightowl me i probably can't function before 12pm on normal days. and like basically i think i was feeling quite complacent from my trip to mokpo like pft i know all this HAHHA cos tbh the start the grammar was quite ohkay. but i think the thing abt me is that my writing is very problematic. my writing is very spoken-like meaning all the small bits of grammar often omitted in speaking but essential in writing is missing in my writing also. so my writing tests were always quite jialat.

the really nice thing tho was that our class was really small. like i think 9 people? so it was easy to talk to the teacher, and she would come and sit and chat w us and all that!! and idk i think it helped make learning easier? at first i thought there was this really awkward air btwn me and my teacher (actl i think there still is la hahha tbh) but then it got better as time went by and we were able to chat.

i also found a new friend in this class!!! unfortunately, she wont be taking korean 6 w me ;A; bc she graduated alr. it was a graduating sem HAIS

ohkay but yeah generally i enjoyed korean. it's just that when my grades started coming back rly bad to me, i was a bit worried bc korean 5 is a 4k mod and 4k mods are 5mcs so if i had to s/u it then basically i would only have one more mod to s/u instead of 2 and yknow that was just kind of stressful la hahhaha but thank God that everything really worked out in the end. He wasn't joking when He said to leave it all to Him (:

Exam Format: it's really CA ah hahha. but there's still the mid and final exams. basically just think of it as the chinese exams we take in pri/sec sch (idk how the jc one is like i didnt take it oops) but in korean. there were also other things we had to do like we had writing tests and all that too. and like we had this one where it was a speaking test. so basically you and a friend had to come up w a creative way to express your ideas on the topic of "why do i learn foreign languages?". and it can be anything. so for my friend and i, we pretended like we were vloggers (sO cReATivE i kNoW) and just talked. btw it's 10-15mins long hor HAHHAHAH while we initially wanted to use a script (cos there was no rules against it) we ended up practicing it enough that we didnt use a script and just talked like that HAHHAH we also were a bit sneaky la cos we asked to be first. like we told our tchr before class even started that we wanted to be first OOPS HAHA  so that i could enjoy the others in peace (': and wow omg there was this one grp they were so good????? so basically they pretended it was a korean rap show that had international participants. then i thought they were just gonna interview the "rapper" but then they were like beat 주세요! AND SHE STRAIGHT UP RAPPED HER POINTS???? LIKE LEGIT IT SOUNDED SO LEGIT AND GOOD OMG I'M DEAD I WAS SO FREAKING AMAZED THANKFULLY SOMEONE TOOK A VIDEO OF HER DOING IT OMG I'M DEAD HAHAHHAHA oh wow this is such a long exam format oops soz ><

Recommend? personally, i enjoyed myself ah. but it's really up to you lor. just really keep in mind that this is 5mcs so dont strut in thinking that you have enough s/us and can afford to blow this. check carefully first  :D


NM2101 - Theories of Communications and New Media
Grade: B+
Lecturer: Dr. Renyi Hong
Tutor: Ms. Samra Irfan

honestly i walked into this mod thinking that it was gonna be boring af and just a waste of my time - a mod that i HAVE to take to grad. so i really didn't have much expectations and i kind of wanted to just go in and get out LOL but oh boy how wrong i was????

i think it's how amazing the teacher is really. he makes the most boring things sound so interesting. i think i really learnt a lot from this mod. i mean ya it basically focusses on theories but then it's also really cool at the end of the sem when you compile all that you've learnt and you just realise how real these all are in everyday life? i think the cool thing abt social sciences is  that everything is instantly relatable and i dont have to sit down there imagining how hexene interacts w my bodily functions HAHAH (no shade on science i love science too legit xoxo)

i would say to really pay attention in lecture (kind of regret doing other things and coming late ;A;) because you really learn a lot in it and it's really so!!! interesting!!!! like legit. i'm so amazed i cant believe i'll enjoy theory but there you have it! also! read the tb!!! i got the tb from a friend and it came w highlights and things like that so it made understanding easier for me but even without, i dont think the tb is confusing - pretty straightforward if u ask me.. just don't be an idiot like me and do all the reading in reading week HAHA it really doesnt take that much to finish!! it's not some insane hist mod that expects u to read a book a week

tutorials for me where honestly quite a bore. (no offence to the tutor it has nothing to do w her) like idk i think cos my tut was on the same day as my lect so everything's fresh in my head. and when tut goes through what lect taught i'm just here like ... i literally learnt that this morning HAHA so

Exam format: there's a personal media memoir somewhere in the beginning - honestly this one is quite easy to do. me being the terrible student did it the night before but my grades for this came out fine!!! probs what saved me from a b lol and then for midterms and finals it's mcq, true false and short answer (one page) questions. really really really do the readings cos for me, it was all from the readings!!!! there's also a individual essay to do which i probably completely blew HAHAH u have to choose a (or two and then compare) theory taught and analyse a situation about it.

Recommend? honestly, if the lecturer is Dr. Hong again, YES. legit. esp if u HAVE to take this, try to take it during the sems he's lecturing u wont regret it omg. did i mention that Dr. Hong has this magical ability where he begins class on time and ends ON TIME or early WITHOUT HAVING TO RUSH HIS LAST FEW SLIDES????? like he keeps at a constant pace and ends on time every time?? damn hahha


NM2303 - Fake News, Lies and Spin: How to Sift Fact from Fiction
Grade: B+
Lecturer: Dr. Francesca Nathan
Tutor: Dr. Francesca Nathan

(lmao back at it in April, when the sem is AGAIN about to end HAHHAHA)

anyway, so i took this module because it sounded really so interesting!!! like idk the name sounded so nice and i really wanted to take it since y1s1 so i was like why not? hahaha. and well, tbh i dont know what to say about it lah hahaha. like i think it's interesting in that she does teach you the different methods in testing the reliability of news? like there's a lot of different aspects of it and she talks about the different kind of misinformation and disinformation (i.e. misinformation is unintentional, disinformation is intentional).

i would say that like... ohkay lah. the mod itself isn't too bad? the lectures were... at the start it was quite ohkay. she's one of those kind of teachers that don't give you slides before class so you have to write the notes yourself. i can't tell if it's because of the sem dragging me down or because class really just started getting more and more irrelevant but in the first few weeks i did pay attention and wrote down notes and everything but then as time passed i just... stopped. HAHAH i literally was doing my other work in class (like French otl) and barely paid any attention. i took this mod w jobeth (i mean, i didn't really plan lah but we were both in the mod) and 90% of the time towards the end of the sem we were just talking about makeup and other stuff that's not related to lecture lah basically HAHAHA

the tutorials were... i would say idk leh. i mean it's just going through stuff that you have to do. like prepare for the tutorial so you mainly discuss with the people around you and then talk about it.

i don't have a lot of qualms about this lah tbh

i think the most annoying thing about this module, on the tutorial side is that i felt she was being super hypocritical??? cos basically she was damn strict about people coming in on time. like 5 mins late means marked late. and i mean i'm ohkay w that lah honestly cos that's the policy mah i ain't gonna fight a policy and i'm the one at fault for being late. but what i DONT get is that she screeches about us being late but she deadass lets us off 30 mins or so late?????? like don't give me that bullshit about how she's just teaching us and we should appreciate or whatever. bc i feel that if ure so bloody strict about punctuality and everything then shouldn't you, as the teacher, also be punctual? start punctually, let us off punctually. there was this rly annoying girl that KEPT asking qns in class and honestly i'm not trying to be arrogant or what but she asks really dumbass questions and Ms Fran had to keep answering to her. and that rly made us late but super long. to the point i just left at 7:35 once tutorial time was up bc  i didn't think it was worth my time anymore. i think Ms Fran learnt how to shut her up and tell her to take these useless qns out of class and for them to discuss personally but i rly felt like she was managing time super badly.

for lectures and readings, i appreciate that she creates the notes for us - meaning she does all the readings and then summarises and writes notes for us. but for a former health journalist (is that what she was?) i felt like her language choice was really quite poor. she always chose words that had double meanings or had ambiguous meanings. the one that i rmb the most is in the first tut where the qn was "discuss whether it is ambiguous context or blurred context" or something along these lines. and we were hella confused bc isn't ambiguous a synonym of blurred in this context??????? so how are we supposed to choose???? and then when we asked her she said that she meant ambiguous AND blurred. and i guess grammatically 'or' does sometimes mean 'and' (i think??!?!???) but really?? was it that hard to type and???? isn't this quite jialat sentence structure LOL

and like this one is not by me, but there was this one guy in my class who really really really hated her. and he wrote this super long angry essay about her in the teacher feedback. and he was saying how she herself wasn't even sure of her own points in her notes. like she would argue like hell w her students then when her students would give a proper argument that supported the point which opposed her, she would be like oh! ohkay. then let's change the information in the notes. so there was one of the notes that was revised twice within the sem itself (': and according to him she would be very irritated when people didn't understand her - 'like the omg u idiot can't u get me, my word is law' kind of thing. honestly i didn't feel all these probably bc i didn't pay attention in lecture but ya yknow??? i dont thin i knew anyone that didn't have at least SOME beef with her.

and also this is unrelated but she took attendance in every lecture. and was super strict about it. cos must sign what right. then her assistant (??) bernadette will literally check through during class and call out names of those whom she thinks got their friends to sign their attendance for them. and correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think lecturers have the right to mark attendance during lecture? tutorials yes. but lecture it's like if students dowanna come then it's their loss, right? idk tbh.

ohkay this sounds just like a whole complain article about her LOL. and very honestly, i feel like. she spoiled the mod lah. no offence and im rly sorry Ms Fran. but. i think i really tried to go in w an open mind but her attitude and actions really just made me so done with the mod lah. hahahha

Exam format: it uses examplify (OH YAH IN EVERY LECTURE MUST DO ONE DAMN QUIZ ON EXAMPLIFY THAT CLOSES EVERYTHING ON UR COMPUTER BC SHE WANTS TO MAKE SURE WE KNOW HOW TO USE IT BUT THEN IT F-ED UP SO MANY TIMES AS COMPARED TO NM1101E WHERE I DIDN'T EVEN DO ANY MOCK TESTS BUT EVERYTHING WORKED OUT WELL) lmao sorry for the explosion. but yeah. there's that. and it's mostly mcq w an essay i think? but the essay is separated into two parts. bc there's a word/character limit in examplify. which i thought was quite annoying lah. cos then as i was writing my essay i had to summarise it also??? ain't nobody got time fo dat my friend. like yah. i think i ran out of time. like i couldn't edit it properly. the essay is like... cos she teaches us how to breakdown a news article to see if it's reliable so you just have to do that to one of the articles she attaches. then the mcqs is just what we learnt in class lor i think? like maybe she'll show a type of misinformation and ask what kind of misinformation it is.

Recommend? um. HAHAHHAHA honestly idk what to say about it lah. it's not a super difficult mod definitely, but the blood pressure raise u get from the teacher may not be worth it (': i wouldn't say i thoroughly enjoyed myself in this mod but it's not shit lah i guess?



NM3215 - Advertising Strategies
Grade: A-
Lecturer: Dr. Hong Soo Jung
Tutor: Dr. Hong Soo Jung

my first 3k mod!! at freaking y2s1 LOL

first thing i wanna say about this mod - if you're planning to go on exchange as a cnm student then don't take this mod so fast because majority of schools that you can apply to as a cnm student will have advertising strategies that you can map over - i had the agony of realising that when i was trying to map mods for exchange and wanted to pull my hair out when i realised that almost every school had advertising strategies BUT i couldn't map that since i was ALREADY taking it >_>

ohkay back to the mod itself. i think this mod is really nice!!! like. i think it really opens your eyes to the advertising around you and the kind of strategies they employ. like when you watch iphone advertisements and redmart advertisements, there are different kinds of positioning strategies that they employ. so it's really just quite nice to see how things go ah. and there was a special lecture by someone from blk J and omg it was damn cool lah blk J hahahaha. maybe i should apply to intern there for CIP HAHAHHAH

i think my only qualm for lectures and stuff is like... the readings are bloody long. like no joke. some weeks you have to read probably up to 50 pages worth of textbook readings AND prepare for tut AND handle all your other mods it's really damn insane. im damn thankful for shahirah for sending me her notes bc omg w/o it idk how im gonna be able to do this mod alr???? and i was honestly quite worried bc 3k means cannot s/u hahha.

tuts were quite ohkay. i wasn't able to choose my grp, not sure about other tuts. but like yeah. at the beginning it was individual work to find advertisements and talk about them in regards to what was being taught that week. then after that we had a group project where we had to choose a client (we chose honestbee haha) and come up w a promotional plan for them or something like that? hahahahha.

honestly the group project was quite tiring. bc there was so much to do and like there isn't a report to write, only a presentation at the very end. so you have to squeeze EVERYTHING like all your justifications what not into the slides WHILST making it pretty and everything. so that was when it got rly quite stress for us cos if we don't put things in the slide, then the tutor doesn't see it then we don't get the marks for it even though we did do it. but then too many words also a bit siao  oh and did i mention that we have a limit for the number of slides??? and then i think we could only present for 10 mins or something. so it was just a huge rush to present finish and to squeeze everything into the limited number of slides we had. at the same time, we had to make our slides nice. like wah piang that was so many things cries. HAHA

for the collateral matrial though, we were super lucky to have hazzry who was well-versed in ps and illustrator to design it for us. i think i did the least out of my entire group lor and i feel rly bad about it ))): cos my style is to do things like the day before. but then everyone's style seemed like the kinds that did work early. so everytime by the time i log in to do work, everyone's already done it so i just edit and add in anything that i may have. i was supposed to design a few slides too. and i did that but then they redesigned it so (':

ripped these photos off cheryl's ig. thank u cheryl HAHHAHAHAH anyway this us after the final presentation. we had to wear formal-ish i think? but i think we're the only group that were dressed so formally where everyone was wearing a blazer AND WE DEADASS BOUGHT THE SAME SHIRTS HAHHAHAH it says fresh and there's a reason why and that's bc we had a usp or something about the stuff from honestbee being fresh LOL

but honestly i think the biggest thing im thankful for is my group lah. like i really got one of the best groups out there i'm very sure. like really. they were all so amazing and we all had our different strengths that could work together and im just in awe lah. it was an amazing group and they made this mod so much more enjoyable and much less tiring hehe.

Exam format: LMAO the exam format otl. so um the midterms bellcurve is super high cos the qns are quite simple. so make sure u know ur theories, and concepts and all that cos it gets tested. memorise stuff like positioning strategies, promotional mix, etc. cos it may come out - as just simple qns like "name the 4 things in a promotional mix" or something like that hahahha. the finals were a nightmare though. can u imagine - 40 MCQs AND 4 essays. all in the span of like 2 hours or something???? i didn't finish i think there were 2 qns that were left unfinished hais. oh! remember your examples!!

Recommend? no if you're planning to go on exchange. if not, i think it's really quite nice lah. just be prepared for quite a bit of work and readings. and pray hard u get a good group HAHA


SO! I ISH DONE! y2s1 was quite insane lah haha. i can't believe i took an entire semester to finish this again. i think it's gonna be like that from now HAHAHA but next sem imma be on exchange soooooo we'll see :p

Hope™

DISCLAIMER: idk if i'm gonna kena anything for talking bad about teachers/modules over here. or if there will be changes to the modules in the future and people end up being misled for a module. but i'm here to say that all these are my opinions; they may not be right or accurate, but this is what i felt. and all information is correct as of the time i took the modules (i.e. Semester 1 of Academic Year 18/19 at the National University of Singapore).