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As inspired by my senior (shoutout to Jeff if you ever come across this blog!) , I decided to create my own blog to review courses that I take every sem in NTU as well as, in Jeff's own words: "To serve as a memory for the future!" :)
Y1S1: Aug 2018 - Dec 2018 (though my last paper was 28/11)
General comments on what I did well, what I could have improved on etc will be included at the end of the post. I will also update the final results when they are out.
Each course is broken up into the following parts:
1. Marks and assessment component of the course
2. Course mechanics
3. Short Intro
4. Easy parts
5. Difficult parts
6. Exams/ final paper
7. Tips to do well
8. Overview/ my personal (MIGHT BE BIASED) comments
YEAR 1 SEMESTER 1 (17AU):
MAJ-CORE: PH1012 PHYSICS A (4AU), GRADED
MAJ-CORE: MH1810 MATHEMATICS 1 (3AU), GRADED
MAJ-CORE: EE1005 FROM COM THINKING TO PROGRAMMING (3AU), GRADED
MAJ-CORE: FE1073 INTRO TO ENG PRACTICES (1AU), GRADED
GER-CORE: HW0188 ENGINE COMMS 1 (2AU), GRADED
GER-CORE: GC0001 SEEING THRU THE HAZE (1AU), P/F
GER-PE (LA): HE9091 PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMICS (3AU), GRADED
CORE/MPE AU CLEARD: 11/61, TOTAL GRADED COURSES:16 /69, TOTAL AU CLEARED: 17/141
=== REVIEW PORTION ===
PH1012 - Physics A (Y1S1/4AU)
Lecturer: Dr Ho Shen Yong
Tutor: Mr Lim Kim Siong
MasteringPhysics (10%): 10/10
Learning Catalytics (10%): 5.8/10 (terrible score and I will explain why later)
Mid Term 1 (10%): 29/60
Mid Term 2 (10%): 22/60
Finals (60%): ?
Overall Grade: -
1 x 2h lecture + 1 x 1h lecture (both lectures are recorded) + 1 x 1h tutorial every week (attendance taken but does not affect marks according to my tutor). Mid terms are spread across the semester rather evenly and are held on Saturdays so those who stay in hall have the advantage. LC and MP are done in lecture and at home every week respectively. Finals is a 2.5h paper testing on generally a range of topics taught (more details below).
As everyone knows, PH1012 is for those who did not take H2 Physics in JC or the poly kids who don't have physics background. As such, this course serves to bridge all these people to those who have H2 physics. The content taught is almost similar to what they teach in JC, all squeezed into 13 weeks. However, to say that the whole A level syllabus is included would be a misconception. There are topics not included such as superposition, transformers (under electricity after AC/DC) etc. However, there are stuff not from A levels as well e.g. Gauss Law. So I guess it's a give and take???
Personally, I felt that physics was not particularly easy. I'd easily rate it as the subject I spent the most of my time on just trying to understand the concepts. The content is heavy and there are a lot of things to cover. Also, I am someone who MUST understand how something works so I tended to spend a lot of time getting to the derivation of certain formulas in a way that I could understand. Case in point, I spent a few nights trying to derive the logic behind Gauss Law and had to call up my old tutor and ask my friend in Cambridge for help. But it felt really good when I understood the concept behind it so I guess it was a good payoff.
The lecture content, as mentioned, is EXTREMELY heavy. There are videos to watch every week before going for lecture and I tried to make it a point to watch as much as possible. Dr Ho is a cute guy I feel (no homo tho) and tries his best to get the content across. He livens up the boring stuff with videos and live demos of some concepts. However, don't be distracted by what goes on in lecture; the important thing is to grasp the concepts that are being taught because that is the key to doing well in the final paper.
Finals was manageable yet tedious. The topics are evenly spread and covers the key concepts of the whole course. Not sure how everyone else found it, but I felt it was easier than mid terms (maybe cos I really studied for finals). Don't take it from me though, my score for MT was absolute trash so I'm in no position to give such advice.
For PH1012 tips, I strongly recommend that you be exam smart for this course. It's not like in sec/JC where we had time to learn and appreciate everything up till the smallest detail. In uni, it doesn't work like that. Focus on the key topics tested in the exam, which if I had to name a few, would be Thermodynamics (it always appears), Kirchhoff/ Capacitors (doesn't always appears but if it does, should be a giveaway especially the part asking to calculate current), electric field/potential (you MUST know how to do this type of questions by finals), forces type questions including rotation motion/ torque (word of caution: Dr Ho likes to kill with this question), work/energy/power type questions etc. Make sure you understand these topics like the back of your hand because they carry good marks. Also, be diligent in doing your LC/MP because those 2 are a giveaway 20%. I made a mistake by thinking I would get the full LC marks for each week if I just answered one question per LC. Turns out, each question carried weight and I ended up losing a lot of marks because I didn't answer all of them fml.
Personally, I didn't like my tutor. I heard he gave great summaries but I didn't really attend any tutorials this sem because I wanted to study on my own. I don't like him because there were numerous occasions I tried to ask him for consults but he kept rejecting (citing busy schedule) or cancelled on me. Didn't have the heart to rate him down during the feedback though because I'll admit I wasn't exactly the most diligent student either when it came to attending tutorials.
EDIT: I won't try to hide the fact that I am disappointed with my Physics grade. For all the hard work that I put into the mod, the return was... not what I'd expected. But to be fair, I can see why I didn't get at least a B. I lost a lot of marks not doing the LC properly. I honestly think that the 4.2% would have made a huge difference and would have probably gotten me my B. I can't blame anyone except myself for this.
EDIT: I won't try to hide the fact that I am disappointed with my Physics grade. For all the hard work that I put into the mod, the return was... not what I'd expected. But to be fair, I can see why I didn't get at least a B. I lost a lot of marks not doing the LC properly. I honestly think that the 4.2% would have made a huge difference and would have probably gotten me my B. I can't blame anyone except myself for this.
==
MH1810 - Mathematics I (Y1S1/3AU)
Lecturer: Dr Tang Wee Kee
Tutor: Mr Nicole Leong
Test 1 (6%): 2/6
Test 2 (6%): 2/6
Test 3 (6%): 4/6
6 Online Assignments (12%): Lazy list them out
Take home Assignment (10%): 9.7/10
Finals (60%): ?
Overall Grade: -
1 x 2h lecture + 1 x 1h tutorial every week. The 3 tests are 3 MCQ quizzes spread out across the semester rather evenly. Online Assignments are to be done every other week on NTULearn and multiple attempts are allowed where they will take the best score. Take home assignment is given towards the end of the sem and to be handed in on the last tutorial. Finals is a 2h paper testing on all topics taught, with more emphasis given to later topics i.e ddx/integration with limit concepts infused here and there if I recall correctly (annoying af).
MH1810 is the a core for all engine students who have H2 mathematics background and who opted to take Math (for those who scored A for H2 Mathematics). It covers certain topics from JC, namely Complex Numbers, Vectors, ddx, Integration. Again, as with PH1012, there are some give and takes in MH1810 for example, Complex Numbers in MH1810 does not talk about loci and the vectors part skims through the part about Vector Planes (there's no mention of foot of perpendicular, intersection of planes to find the equation of line etc). However, there is a new topic of Limits which is a huge pain in the ass. There's a lot of new content in Limits but it can be distilled down into a summary for the exams. Also, they introduce some new stuff in the existng topics such as Mean Value Theorem, Intermediate Value Theorem, Extreme Value Theorem, L'Hopital (fondly referred to as the Hospital Rule by Dr Tang LOL) etc. It may sound complicated and scary and the definitions are actually quite a handful but they are actually quite easy to understand and apply; you just need to get through the initial phase of learning them for the first time.
The course is easy in the sense that a lot of the content for it is essentially just a revision of secondary + JC maths. If you have an excellent foundation in your sec/JC amath/H2 math respectively, a significant proportion of the course does not have to be studied. Plus, as mentioned earlier, they cut out a lot of stuff compared to what I learnt back in sec/JC. As a result of this, I basically skipped through at least 3-4 lectures worth of content and only revisited some parts where the lecturer covered the extra stuff like the new theorems.
The hard part of the course would be, in my opinion, the many different theorems. There are many conditions for the theorems which can be quite confusing e.g. "let f be a continuous function within the interval of..." is repeated many times and there are many nuances in the conditions which characterize different theorems. So if you are not careful, you may recall the wrong condition and plug in the wrong theorem to solve the problem.
The exam is very manageable in the sense that they don't test super deep stuff. In fact, it is even easier than the tutorials I feel. For the record, the tutorials on Vectors and Complex were damn hard and I took a long time to do them compared to Matrices. I think it was SPMS's way of welcoming us back to school LOL. Like I said, you must be very in touch with your maths all the way back to secondary Add Math because some parts of the course require you to solve for rate of change etc. However, keep in mind that the 2h allocated for finals can easily be too little time if you fall into the trap of spending too much time for a single question, which happened to me. Some questions can also be tricky and you might need to think beyond the surface to understand what they are trying to say, case in point the vector question which required us to draw a quadrilateral and a lot of people including myself thought it was a parallelogram when it really wasn't.
To do well in MH1810, my advice would be to not go so much for depth but to aim to be proficient in breadth of content. For the finals, the questions on Complex, Vectors and Matrices are usually easy and you should be able to get full if not close to full marks for every question. The hard part lies in the integration because according to Dr Tang: "I didn't really have an opportunity to test you guys on Integration throughout the course because it is the last topic I cover." Also, knowing your double angle formulas from add math will help.
If there is one regret I have for this course, it would have been not scoring higher for my test 1 and test 2 and doing better for my 6 online assignments. I predict that the bell curve is going to be steep for this mod so every little bit counts. Hopefully I can net a B+ if not it's gonna suck a lot.
EDIT: Ok what the actual fuck happened. I expected a B as the worst grade but I got a fucking C??? How in the fuck did that happen.
If I had to guess, it would be because I screwed up my 2 tests (2/6) and the 4/6 one could have been better. I really don't think my finals was done THAT badly. 2 of my online assignments could have been way better done as well. But other than that...
SERIOUSLY? WHAT THE FUCK.
==
EE1005 - From Computational Thinking To Programming (Y1S1/3AU)
Lecturer: Dr Wesley Tan (First half)/ Dr Edwin Teo (Second half)
Tutors: Dr Hilmi Volkan Demir (Assisted by another dude forgot his name and Ho Truong Phu Truan) for first half; Assoc Prof Zhou Xing (Assisted by Abdul Hanif Bin Zaini)
Class Participation (10%): ?
2 x Practical Exercise Assessments (10% each): ?
2 x Practical Test (20% each): ?
Quiz (30%): ?
Overall Grade: -
1 x 2h online lecture + 1 x 3h tutorial/lab per week. Class part is achieved by answering questions in class. The first set of PEA/PT is done by week 7 recess week and the second set is done by week 11. For me, my quiz was held a week after my second PT on a Saturday. After the quiz, you can safely assume that you've completed the course. :)
EE1005 was a course that I really looked forward to when I first started in NTU because I aspire to go into game development. As such, it was natural that I'd be intrigued by a course that taught C. The first lecture was a briefing in which Dr Wesley told us how to navigate our way through the course. Apparently, they'd decided to convert the entire course into one that was conducted entirely through online lectures. The only f2f interaction we'd have would be during tutorial/lab.
The easy part about this course would be... to be honest I don't really know. I would say that learning a computing language takes a lot of time and practice and is not something that can be easily achieved in 13 weeks. As such, this course didn't really bring out the level of proficiency that I wanted myself to achieve after the end of the course. In fact, I didn't even finish the entire syllabus (left out pointers and arrays). However, I can say that I can more or less "read" C programs on a very basic level. Like I would kinda understand what is going roughly but if I had to think like a computer, that would be something that I fall short on.
The hard part of this course is damn obvious. As with any other language courses, there are bound to be those people who have learnt C before the course and as such, they are at a huge advantage when it came to the tests. In my opinion, this would have been a cakewalk for them. Also, the 30% quiz is A KILLER. I did not know anything on that test and randomly shaded my answers. Essentially, they gave us 10 sets of codes to analyse within 30 minutes. Put it in another context, it's like giving 10 full comprehensions to people who barely know their ABCs to analyse. I heard that someone from another LT cried during the test. I think only those who were proficient in C were able to get anything correct at all.
As mentioned, they converted the whole course to an online kind of course, so there were no finals per se.
I think that to do well in this course, you have to practice a lot. The tutorials are not enough if you want to achieve true proficiency. For me, I really wanted to go beyond this course in terms of how well I could code. I really wanted to learn for what it was, not just to pass this course. Imo, I think university students cannot afford the luxury of truly pursuing a worthwhile skill such as coding because everything is simply too rushed and touch-and-go.
I think this course will be my academic "the one who got away" in the sense that I'd always look back and wonder what would have happened if I truly went and pursued this course beyond the curriculum? Of course, there will always be opportunities in the future for me to continue studying C so I hope that by then I still remember what I studied in this course.
EDIT: I'm 100% sure it was the 30% quiz that killed me. One hundred fucking percent. Fuck the quiz. Seriously. 30% fly. Sigh.
==
FE1073 - Intro To Engineering Practices (Lab) (Y1S1/1AU)
Lecturers: Don't know but they were irrelevant
Tutors: Various PhD candidates for each individual lab session
6 lab reports to be submitted, 1 of which will be required to submitted as a formal report or something like that. To be honest, I'm not too sure of the assessment criteria for this particular mod as well.
Overall Grade: -
3 seminars followed by 6 labs each week.
This course is basically a practical lab course for CEE, MAE and EEE students. You will be grouped into a fixed group and the entire cohort will rotate for each experiment every week at different labs around NTU.
The course is generally easy and chill. Expect to finish well ahead of the scheduled 3h per lab if you are fast. I was able to leave early for most of the labs after submitting my report. Oh and the seminars are a waste of time; don't bother going.
There was not really a hard part in the course to speak of. If I had to say anything was hard, it would be to manage your time during lab and read the instructions properly. During the last lab, my friend and I didn't read the instructions and we almost didn't submit our report on time. It was a very clutch experience LOL.
No exams/ finals for this mod.
My recommendation would be to get hold of reports from your seniors and edit a bit for your formal report. They are all basically the same and I don't think they will be marked for plagiarism because they are hardcopy and I don't think the marker cares to check anyway. But again, this is just what I think.
Nothing much to say except that I hate the morning labs lol. There was once I overslept and was late. The lab uncle was quite rude to me when I reported more than 30 min late. I get that I was very late and I was not allowed to join the session but his attitude really ticked me off.
EDIT: Quite disappointed with this result because I REALLY expected A- at least. It can't be the issue with the formal report so I'm guessing it was the normal lab sessions that killed me. I have nothing to say.
==
HW0188 - Engineering Communications I (Y1S1/2AU)
Lecturer: Nil
Tutor: Ms Koh Siew Tin
Assignment 1 Pair (25%): ?
Assignment 2 Individual (30%): ?
Assignment 3 Group Presentation (30%): ?
Class Participation (15%): ?
Overall Grade: -
*I can't remember if this is the exact grading components and I threw away my materials for this mod so it might not be accurate*
No lectures, 1 x 2h tutorial per week. Class part is achieved by handing up 9 units of short answer questions to the tutor. For me, my tutor said she was ok with whenever we handed up the 9 units and in whatever form aka hardcopy, softcopy etc. Assignments are due throughout the course, though I can't remember which exact weeks. I only remember I handed up my Assignment 2 early and my presentation was in week 13.
HW0188 is basically a sped up version of Project Work in JC, just that the theme revolves around Engineering Communications. It's a pretty chill mod and I liked this mod because the workload was light and tutorials were fun, at least sometimes. I still remember there were a few tutorials where we watched cool stuff like Shark Tank and Bill Gates unveiling the iPhone for the first time. As my tutorials were in the morning, I'd go to South Spine Koufu to grab some youtiao breakfast and bring to my class at Hive to eat LOL.
The course is easy in the sense that there's not much content to cover imo. Everything is pretty comonsensical and for the most part I was in class just for the attendance. The graded assignments are pretty easy to do too I feel. I think the deciding factor for whether you like this course or not would be who you are paired up with. Also, the individual assignment was really easy for me. I made quick work of it in 2h.
However, that's not to say that there aren't challenging parts in this course. I think the scariest part would have been the oral presentation. It was held towards the end of the semester and I didn't put a lot of effort into rehearsing for my part as I was spending most of my time on Physics. As such, I felt that I screwed up my oral presentation. Hopefully, my assignment 1 and 2 can cover up for it.
There are no finals for this mod.
A tip to do well would be to find a partner you can work well with. Also, do the assignments early so that you don't let them snowball. The individual assignment won't take too long if you are focused. As for the pair work, just assign parts between you and your partner. That's what my partner and I did. And make it a point to practice your speech before the presentation. Avoid last minute preparation because you will definitely freeze during the actual presentation itself. It happened to me and I was loss for words for a good few seconds. I ended up having to smoke my way through.
Overall, I felt that this course was fun and I would do it again. My tutor was very chill and at some points, I felt like the whole class was bonded, albeit in a weird way, during the tutorial. I don't know, it just felt kind of homely...? LOL. I'm actually quite sad that we are gonna be split up next sem but I guess that I'll have to get used to the fact that a lot of people in uni are temporary, right..? Haha...
EDIT: Immensely thankful that I got the A, even though it was just an A-. Really regretted not preparing well for the speech, if not I could have definitely done better.
==
GC0001 - Seeing Thru The Haze (Y1S1/1AU) [P/F]
Lecturer: Nil
Tutor: Nil
No assessment rubrics, just a pass fail.
Overall Grade: -
No lectures, just go through some videos and answer some questions. It's an OTOT mod, just make sure you finish it by the stipulated dateline.
This mod is one of those filler mods that everyone wonders why the heck is it even in the curriculum?
It's easy, just do it.
Not hard at all. Might get boring though, so I recommend finishing it in 2 sittings instead of torturing yourself through the whole thing.
No finals.
I recommend leaving the videos playing in a window while your laptop is on so you can clear the video. Of course, you can always skip the video and jump straight into the questions, which are very commonsensical and maybe even stupid. Heck, I don't even think they check through your answers at all LOL.
Waste of time mod.
EDIT: nothing to update.
==
HE9091 - Principles Of Economics (Y1S1/3AU)
Lecturer: Dr Tan Khay Boon
Tutor: Some useless China girl
Quiz (30%): 11/20
Finals (70%): -
Overall Grade: ?
1 x 2h lecture + 1 x 1h tutorial per week with the quiz held towards the end of the semester. The final paper is a 2.5h paper with 4 questions, 2 testing topics 1 to 6 and the other 2 testing topics 7 to 12.
This course is pre-registered for all freshmen in their first semester. Freshmen are allowed to swap out this course during the add-drop period for other electives. For me, I thought that it would be easy since I took econs in JC. Another reason I stuck with it was because I was too lazy to swap it out.
I personally felt that there wasn't any 'easy' parts per se for this mod. Whatever I learnt in JC was skimmed over in the first few lectures, so I found myself quite lost throughout the remaining of the course. The way they taught some concepts such as macro econs was also vastly different from how JC taught it. In fact, everything I learnt in JC was jumbled up and made no sense. In a nutshell, this course was basically me trying to find my way around a shit ton of nonsensical content for the entire semester.
This course is hard because the lecturer speeds through A LOT of content. He covered dd/ss in one lecture and I would have been lost if I didn't already know what was going on beforehand. Also, the content is very blurred in the sense that there's a lot of overlapping stuff which I felt that he didn't try to point out to us. For example, there were elements of public good content in irrelevant topics (I forgot what) and everything else was a huge mess. Throughout this course, I felt like I had learnt nothing compared to JC econs where I actually learnt stuff. Looking back, I'm really thankful to Mr Chu and the PJ econs department for putting so much effort into teaching us quality economics. Another point I would like to point out is the terrible tutor I was assigned to. She was so bad that almost nobody attended her lessons after the first few tutorials. She'd just ask us to discuss among ourselves for a few minutes (in which we would just stare blankly at each other) and then flash the answer on the screen. There was no summary of the week's lecture, no quality teaching, basically just discuss -> flash answer -> lousy explanation of the answers like bitch I could read it myself without you opening your damn mouth anyway. I felt like I was scammed into this mod lol.
Perhaps the only saving grace for this mod would be the final paper. For all the shit I say about this mod, the one redeeming factor would have been the paper. In a nutshell, the key to doing well in this paper would be to do as much of the past year papers as possible and be extremely familiar with their answer key. The lecturer follows the same format year after year and the questions do not differ much by and large. In my case, there was a part of the exam (6 mark question) which he literally copied wholesale from the AY15/16 S2 paper on Game Theory. He didn't even bother changing the values of the question lmao. Again I reiterate, mastering the past year papers is the key to doing well for the final paper.
Tips for this course would be as mentioned: be extremely familiar with the pyp. A lot of times, the question might change but the answer is usually the same. Key points to look out for would be being familiar with Mid Point Formula, all the elasticity formulas, Game Theory, Right to Externality, how to calculate GDP/CPI etc etc which can fetch a good amount of marks. As for the 30% quiz, I don't know what advice to give because I personally didn't do very well for it lol.
In general, I feel that this course is a huge scam. Avoid at all costs unless you have a burning passion for economics which you are confident will not be extinguished by a lousy course (in which case you shouldn't even be taking it as a GERPE if you know what I mean). The predictable exam does little to make up for the general lousy standard that this course exhibits since the bell curve is expected to be very steep due to the high number of students getting high scores for both the quiz and final paper. I came in expecting an A but now all I hope for is a B. I don't even know why I choose not to S/U this mod (the S/U window is still open at the time of writing) but since I came in not expecting to use S/U, I think I shall stick to my decision. What a way to destroy the GPA right LOL.
EDIT: Wow... just. Fucking. Wow. I don't know what to say. Except.
FUCK THIS MOD TO ITS VERY DEPTHS.
I regret not S/U-ing. With all my heart, I regret not dropping this course. I sincerely, sincerely hate this course and its co-ordinator, tutor and whoever else there is to be associated with this course. It's like I tried to give this mod a chance by not S/U-ing it but it came back and stabbed me in the back. I could have gotten a 3.0-ish GPA overall but this mod... This. God. Damn. Mod.
I take back all I said about this mod.
My permanent updated stance on this mod is that it is trash. Absolute fucking rubbish. Don't even take it because it's not worth wasting your S/U over it. Don't even study for it. Fuck it. Enough said.
=== END OF REVIEW ===
PERSONAL THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS SEM:
Being thrown back into an academic environment after a long time spent in the army has proven to be quite the challenge. The fact that uni operates at a much faster pace compared to JC set the bar quite high for me. If there's anything I'm glad I did well, it would be that I chose to severely limit my participation in a lot of CCAs in school. Following Jeff's advice to avoid too many distractions (and by extrapolation, the dramas that come with involving myself in certain social situations) has proven to be a good start for me. I took this sem as a "testing water" kind of period to see how I should adjust to the pressures of university life and I'm glad I now have a sense of how I should be studying in uni. I plan to take on more responsibilities next semester by going back to take up my piano grade. I've talked it out with Mummy and she's willing to sponsor my remaining piano grades on condition that I don't let piano affect my uni grades (not that I'll get very good grades by the look of how I performed this sem anyway LOL). I think that it's a fair deal and I hope that I'll be able to manage next sem.
As for my shortcomings and what can be improved on for next sem, I think that I could work a lot more to reduce my procrastination. It's been a really bad habit of mine this sem and I felt that I could have gotten a lot more done if I didn't spend so much time on my phone. Also, I neglected my physical condition towards the last part of the semester. I realised I've gotten pretty unfit; I can't even run my 2.4 without stopping halfway anymore. I need to start training up again cos I've yet to take my IPPT for this window.
All in all, this sem has been a rather tame yet tedious one. I hope next sem will be kinder to me and not kill me so bad academically. Here's to a month's rest and then it's back to the battlefield again!
The course is easy in the sense that a lot of the content for it is essentially just a revision of secondary + JC maths. If you have an excellent foundation in your sec/JC amath/H2 math respectively, a significant proportion of the course does not have to be studied. Plus, as mentioned earlier, they cut out a lot of stuff compared to what I learnt back in sec/JC. As a result of this, I basically skipped through at least 3-4 lectures worth of content and only revisited some parts where the lecturer covered the extra stuff like the new theorems.
The hard part of the course would be, in my opinion, the many different theorems. There are many conditions for the theorems which can be quite confusing e.g. "let f be a continuous function within the interval of..." is repeated many times and there are many nuances in the conditions which characterize different theorems. So if you are not careful, you may recall the wrong condition and plug in the wrong theorem to solve the problem.
The exam is very manageable in the sense that they don't test super deep stuff. In fact, it is even easier than the tutorials I feel. For the record, the tutorials on Vectors and Complex were damn hard and I took a long time to do them compared to Matrices. I think it was SPMS's way of welcoming us back to school LOL. Like I said, you must be very in touch with your maths all the way back to secondary Add Math because some parts of the course require you to solve for rate of change etc. However, keep in mind that the 2h allocated for finals can easily be too little time if you fall into the trap of spending too much time for a single question, which happened to me. Some questions can also be tricky and you might need to think beyond the surface to understand what they are trying to say, case in point the vector question which required us to draw a quadrilateral and a lot of people including myself thought it was a parallelogram when it really wasn't.
To do well in MH1810, my advice would be to not go so much for depth but to aim to be proficient in breadth of content. For the finals, the questions on Complex, Vectors and Matrices are usually easy and you should be able to get full if not close to full marks for every question. The hard part lies in the integration because according to Dr Tang: "I didn't really have an opportunity to test you guys on Integration throughout the course because it is the last topic I cover." Also, knowing your double angle formulas from add math will help.
If there is one regret I have for this course, it would have been not scoring higher for my test 1 and test 2 and doing better for my 6 online assignments. I predict that the bell curve is going to be steep for this mod so every little bit counts. Hopefully I can net a B+ if not it's gonna suck a lot.
EDIT: Ok what the actual fuck happened. I expected a B as the worst grade but I got a fucking C??? How in the fuck did that happen.
If I had to guess, it would be because I screwed up my 2 tests (2/6) and the 4/6 one could have been better. I really don't think my finals was done THAT badly. 2 of my online assignments could have been way better done as well. But other than that...
SERIOUSLY? WHAT THE FUCK.
==
EE1005 - From Computational Thinking To Programming (Y1S1/3AU)
Lecturer: Dr Wesley Tan (First half)/ Dr Edwin Teo (Second half)
Tutors: Dr Hilmi Volkan Demir (Assisted by another dude forgot his name and Ho Truong Phu Truan) for first half; Assoc Prof Zhou Xing (Assisted by Abdul Hanif Bin Zaini)
Class Participation (10%): ?
2 x Practical Exercise Assessments (10% each): ?
2 x Practical Test (20% each): ?
Quiz (30%): ?
Overall Grade: -
1 x 2h online lecture + 1 x 3h tutorial/lab per week. Class part is achieved by answering questions in class. The first set of PEA/PT is done by week 7 recess week and the second set is done by week 11. For me, my quiz was held a week after my second PT on a Saturday. After the quiz, you can safely assume that you've completed the course. :)
EE1005 was a course that I really looked forward to when I first started in NTU because I aspire to go into game development. As such, it was natural that I'd be intrigued by a course that taught C. The first lecture was a briefing in which Dr Wesley told us how to navigate our way through the course. Apparently, they'd decided to convert the entire course into one that was conducted entirely through online lectures. The only f2f interaction we'd have would be during tutorial/lab.
The easy part about this course would be... to be honest I don't really know. I would say that learning a computing language takes a lot of time and practice and is not something that can be easily achieved in 13 weeks. As such, this course didn't really bring out the level of proficiency that I wanted myself to achieve after the end of the course. In fact, I didn't even finish the entire syllabus (left out pointers and arrays). However, I can say that I can more or less "read" C programs on a very basic level. Like I would kinda understand what is going roughly but if I had to think like a computer, that would be something that I fall short on.
The hard part of this course is damn obvious. As with any other language courses, there are bound to be those people who have learnt C before the course and as such, they are at a huge advantage when it came to the tests. In my opinion, this would have been a cakewalk for them. Also, the 30% quiz is A KILLER. I did not know anything on that test and randomly shaded my answers. Essentially, they gave us 10 sets of codes to analyse within 30 minutes. Put it in another context, it's like giving 10 full comprehensions to people who barely know their ABCs to analyse. I heard that someone from another LT cried during the test. I think only those who were proficient in C were able to get anything correct at all.
As mentioned, they converted the whole course to an online kind of course, so there were no finals per se.
I think that to do well in this course, you have to practice a lot. The tutorials are not enough if you want to achieve true proficiency. For me, I really wanted to go beyond this course in terms of how well I could code. I really wanted to learn for what it was, not just to pass this course. Imo, I think university students cannot afford the luxury of truly pursuing a worthwhile skill such as coding because everything is simply too rushed and touch-and-go.
I think this course will be my academic "the one who got away" in the sense that I'd always look back and wonder what would have happened if I truly went and pursued this course beyond the curriculum? Of course, there will always be opportunities in the future for me to continue studying C so I hope that by then I still remember what I studied in this course.
EDIT: I'm 100% sure it was the 30% quiz that killed me. One hundred fucking percent. Fuck the quiz. Seriously. 30% fly. Sigh.
==
FE1073 - Intro To Engineering Practices (Lab) (Y1S1/1AU)
Lecturers: Don't know but they were irrelevant
Tutors: Various PhD candidates for each individual lab session
6 lab reports to be submitted, 1 of which will be required to submitted as a formal report or something like that. To be honest, I'm not too sure of the assessment criteria for this particular mod as well.
Overall Grade: -
3 seminars followed by 6 labs each week.
This course is basically a practical lab course for CEE, MAE and EEE students. You will be grouped into a fixed group and the entire cohort will rotate for each experiment every week at different labs around NTU.
The course is generally easy and chill. Expect to finish well ahead of the scheduled 3h per lab if you are fast. I was able to leave early for most of the labs after submitting my report. Oh and the seminars are a waste of time; don't bother going.
There was not really a hard part in the course to speak of. If I had to say anything was hard, it would be to manage your time during lab and read the instructions properly. During the last lab, my friend and I didn't read the instructions and we almost didn't submit our report on time. It was a very clutch experience LOL.
No exams/ finals for this mod.
My recommendation would be to get hold of reports from your seniors and edit a bit for your formal report. They are all basically the same and I don't think they will be marked for plagiarism because they are hardcopy and I don't think the marker cares to check anyway. But again, this is just what I think.
Nothing much to say except that I hate the morning labs lol. There was once I overslept and was late. The lab uncle was quite rude to me when I reported more than 30 min late. I get that I was very late and I was not allowed to join the session but his attitude really ticked me off.
EDIT: Quite disappointed with this result because I REALLY expected A- at least. It can't be the issue with the formal report so I'm guessing it was the normal lab sessions that killed me. I have nothing to say.
==
HW0188 - Engineering Communications I (Y1S1/2AU)
Lecturer: Nil
Tutor: Ms Koh Siew Tin
Assignment 1 Pair (25%): ?
Assignment 2 Individual (30%): ?
Assignment 3 Group Presentation (30%): ?
Class Participation (15%): ?
Overall Grade: -
*I can't remember if this is the exact grading components and I threw away my materials for this mod so it might not be accurate*
No lectures, 1 x 2h tutorial per week. Class part is achieved by handing up 9 units of short answer questions to the tutor. For me, my tutor said she was ok with whenever we handed up the 9 units and in whatever form aka hardcopy, softcopy etc. Assignments are due throughout the course, though I can't remember which exact weeks. I only remember I handed up my Assignment 2 early and my presentation was in week 13.
HW0188 is basically a sped up version of Project Work in JC, just that the theme revolves around Engineering Communications. It's a pretty chill mod and I liked this mod because the workload was light and tutorials were fun, at least sometimes. I still remember there were a few tutorials where we watched cool stuff like Shark Tank and Bill Gates unveiling the iPhone for the first time. As my tutorials were in the morning, I'd go to South Spine Koufu to grab some youtiao breakfast and bring to my class at Hive to eat LOL.
The course is easy in the sense that there's not much content to cover imo. Everything is pretty comonsensical and for the most part I was in class just for the attendance. The graded assignments are pretty easy to do too I feel. I think the deciding factor for whether you like this course or not would be who you are paired up with. Also, the individual assignment was really easy for me. I made quick work of it in 2h.
However, that's not to say that there aren't challenging parts in this course. I think the scariest part would have been the oral presentation. It was held towards the end of the semester and I didn't put a lot of effort into rehearsing for my part as I was spending most of my time on Physics. As such, I felt that I screwed up my oral presentation. Hopefully, my assignment 1 and 2 can cover up for it.
There are no finals for this mod.
A tip to do well would be to find a partner you can work well with. Also, do the assignments early so that you don't let them snowball. The individual assignment won't take too long if you are focused. As for the pair work, just assign parts between you and your partner. That's what my partner and I did. And make it a point to practice your speech before the presentation. Avoid last minute preparation because you will definitely freeze during the actual presentation itself. It happened to me and I was loss for words for a good few seconds. I ended up having to smoke my way through.
Overall, I felt that this course was fun and I would do it again. My tutor was very chill and at some points, I felt like the whole class was bonded, albeit in a weird way, during the tutorial. I don't know, it just felt kind of homely...? LOL. I'm actually quite sad that we are gonna be split up next sem but I guess that I'll have to get used to the fact that a lot of people in uni are temporary, right..? Haha...
EDIT: Immensely thankful that I got the A, even though it was just an A-. Really regretted not preparing well for the speech, if not I could have definitely done better.
==
GC0001 - Seeing Thru The Haze (Y1S1/1AU) [P/F]
Lecturer: Nil
Tutor: Nil
No assessment rubrics, just a pass fail.
Overall Grade: -
No lectures, just go through some videos and answer some questions. It's an OTOT mod, just make sure you finish it by the stipulated dateline.
This mod is one of those filler mods that everyone wonders why the heck is it even in the curriculum?
It's easy, just do it.
Not hard at all. Might get boring though, so I recommend finishing it in 2 sittings instead of torturing yourself through the whole thing.
No finals.
I recommend leaving the videos playing in a window while your laptop is on so you can clear the video. Of course, you can always skip the video and jump straight into the questions, which are very commonsensical and maybe even stupid. Heck, I don't even think they check through your answers at all LOL.
Waste of time mod.
EDIT: nothing to update.
==
HE9091 - Principles Of Economics (Y1S1/3AU)
Lecturer: Dr Tan Khay Boon
Tutor: Some useless China girl
Quiz (30%): 11/20
Finals (70%): -
Overall Grade: ?
1 x 2h lecture + 1 x 1h tutorial per week with the quiz held towards the end of the semester. The final paper is a 2.5h paper with 4 questions, 2 testing topics 1 to 6 and the other 2 testing topics 7 to 12.
This course is pre-registered for all freshmen in their first semester. Freshmen are allowed to swap out this course during the add-drop period for other electives. For me, I thought that it would be easy since I took econs in JC. Another reason I stuck with it was because I was too lazy to swap it out.
I personally felt that there wasn't any 'easy' parts per se for this mod. Whatever I learnt in JC was skimmed over in the first few lectures, so I found myself quite lost throughout the remaining of the course. The way they taught some concepts such as macro econs was also vastly different from how JC taught it. In fact, everything I learnt in JC was jumbled up and made no sense. In a nutshell, this course was basically me trying to find my way around a shit ton of nonsensical content for the entire semester.
This course is hard because the lecturer speeds through A LOT of content. He covered dd/ss in one lecture and I would have been lost if I didn't already know what was going on beforehand. Also, the content is very blurred in the sense that there's a lot of overlapping stuff which I felt that he didn't try to point out to us. For example, there were elements of public good content in irrelevant topics (I forgot what) and everything else was a huge mess. Throughout this course, I felt like I had learnt nothing compared to JC econs where I actually learnt stuff. Looking back, I'm really thankful to Mr Chu and the PJ econs department for putting so much effort into teaching us quality economics. Another point I would like to point out is the terrible tutor I was assigned to. She was so bad that almost nobody attended her lessons after the first few tutorials. She'd just ask us to discuss among ourselves for a few minutes (in which we would just stare blankly at each other) and then flash the answer on the screen. There was no summary of the week's lecture, no quality teaching, basically just discuss -> flash answer -> lousy explanation of the answers like bitch I could read it myself without you opening your damn mouth anyway. I felt like I was scammed into this mod lol.
Perhaps the only saving grace for this mod would be the final paper. For all the shit I say about this mod, the one redeeming factor would have been the paper. In a nutshell, the key to doing well in this paper would be to do as much of the past year papers as possible and be extremely familiar with their answer key. The lecturer follows the same format year after year and the questions do not differ much by and large. In my case, there was a part of the exam (6 mark question) which he literally copied wholesale from the AY15/16 S2 paper on Game Theory. He didn't even bother changing the values of the question lmao. Again I reiterate, mastering the past year papers is the key to doing well for the final paper.
Tips for this course would be as mentioned: be extremely familiar with the pyp. A lot of times, the question might change but the answer is usually the same. Key points to look out for would be being familiar with Mid Point Formula, all the elasticity formulas, Game Theory, Right to Externality, how to calculate GDP/CPI etc etc which can fetch a good amount of marks. As for the 30% quiz, I don't know what advice to give because I personally didn't do very well for it lol.
In general, I feel that this course is a huge scam. Avoid at all costs unless you have a burning passion for economics which you are confident will not be extinguished by a lousy course (in which case you shouldn't even be taking it as a GERPE if you know what I mean). The predictable exam does little to make up for the general lousy standard that this course exhibits since the bell curve is expected to be very steep due to the high number of students getting high scores for both the quiz and final paper. I came in expecting an A but now all I hope for is a B. I don't even know why I choose not to S/U this mod (the S/U window is still open at the time of writing) but since I came in not expecting to use S/U, I think I shall stick to my decision. What a way to destroy the GPA right LOL.
EDIT: Wow... just. Fucking. Wow. I don't know what to say. Except.
FUCK THIS MOD TO ITS VERY DEPTHS.
I regret not S/U-ing. With all my heart, I regret not dropping this course. I sincerely, sincerely hate this course and its co-ordinator, tutor and whoever else there is to be associated with this course. It's like I tried to give this mod a chance by not S/U-ing it but it came back and stabbed me in the back. I could have gotten a 3.0-ish GPA overall but this mod... This. God. Damn. Mod.
I take back all I said about this mod.
My permanent updated stance on this mod is that it is trash. Absolute fucking rubbish. Don't even take it because it's not worth wasting your S/U over it. Don't even study for it. Fuck it. Enough said.
=== END OF REVIEW ===
PERSONAL THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS SEM:
Being thrown back into an academic environment after a long time spent in the army has proven to be quite the challenge. The fact that uni operates at a much faster pace compared to JC set the bar quite high for me. If there's anything I'm glad I did well, it would be that I chose to severely limit my participation in a lot of CCAs in school. Following Jeff's advice to avoid too many distractions (and by extrapolation, the dramas that come with involving myself in certain social situations) has proven to be a good start for me. I took this sem as a "testing water" kind of period to see how I should adjust to the pressures of university life and I'm glad I now have a sense of how I should be studying in uni. I plan to take on more responsibilities next semester by going back to take up my piano grade. I've talked it out with Mummy and she's willing to sponsor my remaining piano grades on condition that I don't let piano affect my uni grades (not that I'll get very good grades by the look of how I performed this sem anyway LOL). I think that it's a fair deal and I hope that I'll be able to manage next sem.
As for my shortcomings and what can be improved on for next sem, I think that I could work a lot more to reduce my procrastination. It's been a really bad habit of mine this sem and I felt that I could have gotten a lot more done if I didn't spend so much time on my phone. Also, I neglected my physical condition towards the last part of the semester. I realised I've gotten pretty unfit; I can't even run my 2.4 without stopping halfway anymore. I need to start training up again cos I've yet to take my IPPT for this window.
All in all, this sem has been a rather tame yet tedious one. I hope next sem will be kinder to me and not kill me so bad academically. Here's to a month's rest and then it's back to the battlefield again!
