Wrapping up.

Just like that, 4 years have passed. 

I'm glad i have this space to record the academic part of my semesters :) And i hope that it is somewhat useful for you too! I'll still be replying to comments :)

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Uni is truly the best period of your life to try new things. I've taken away a few life lessons throughout the years and i'll be sharing it from my perspective and opinions. I don't expect anything from you if you're reading this and if you have a different opinion from me, i respect that :) we're all on our own journey of life! this ain't gonna be some motivational post whatsoever haha, it's really just me sharing my thoughts about my years in uni. i will also be sharing about some stuff about God, and if it makes you feel uncomfortable, please just skip this! it is never my intention to offend anyone, i just wish to jot down my thoughts :)

Through the years i've learnt to really grasp the fact that grades do not define me. sure it seemed as if it's the end of the world getting 25th percentile or a less than ideal grade i was hoping for. My CAP wasn't ideal either, but this doesn't change who I am! my identity is not based on my intelligence or the number of my CAP. i guess everything felt so real and scary at that moment because in my life stage now, society deems CAP to be the very thing that defines my future. but when i took a step back and looked at the whole picture, CAP and grades are just a small part of my entire life. a 25th percentile for 1 module's 1 quiz is just a tiny tiny bump in this road of life. just a tiny bump that won't cause an accident with a permanent damage. i knew that grades weren't everything since year 1, but i was never truly convicted of it. deep down i'd still fear failure and worry so much about my grades. but as the years passed, as i grew in my walk with God too, i learnt that grades are just a small part of my life that God has planned for me. my identity isn't in how high my CAP is, my identity is in God. that regardless of the grade i got, i thanked God for it because He either planned it or allowed it or blessed me with it. if i felt that i didn't study enough and still did well, it's because of God's grace; if i tried my best and still got 25th percentile, i know that God's grace will still carry me through. it doesn't change how much He loves me or the plans He already has in mind for me. overall, it is God's blessings and grace that carried me through. and whatever CAP i'm gonna graduate with, i want to give thanks and all glory to the King :) what's more important is my well-being, my walk with God and what i have done for Him in response to His unconditional love. 

So although i am still jobless even after applying for SO many jobs, i know that somewhere out there is a job waiting for me. i know that God has a job in mind for me and i just need to continue seeking Him for directions. He hears my desires and I want to follow in His will for me too, so i hope God will soon show me which job to take :) my hope is in God, the One who provides for me. isn't it great, to know that the responsibility of your future isn't 100% on you (the burden is too great to bear eeks), and that you can place your hope in something, someone perfect and certain? :) i dont know, it just blows my mind that my future rests in someone greater than i am, and this someone cares and loves me unconditionally and will give me the best. 

I also realized that uni is truly the time to try new things. it's a safe environment to step out of my comfort zone. i'm glad i took up dance, performed, joined a committee, and tried out NUS ambassadors twice. uni, or at least my psych timetable, allows me to have pockets of time to pursue my passion or things i like. i really enjoyed trying new things although i was terrified of it. i'm blessed with a community who is so welcoming and loving. i also enjoyed meeting new people, especially cross-faculties because it's interesting to know what they study, how differently they think and just get to know new people :) sure the acquaintanceship hardly lasts, but it's the 'thrill' of talking to new people that i kinda enjoyed? hahaha. but i understand that this isn't for everyone. regardless, i'd still strongly encourage you to join a club or a cca or just an event! plus, classes in uni is much more affordable than classes outside. i thought some dance classes in uni is expensive, but i took that back when i tried an external dance studio's lessons haha. so make full use of your school fees and go for all the activities! 

making coursemate-friends was tough. it took me 6 sems to familiarize myself with my coursemates cos there are so many of them! it was in my last year when i really got to be more comfortable with my coursemates and say hi to them around school or at least acknowledge each other. i wish i had more time or more opportunities to interact with different coursemates. i'm thankful for church friends who take the same modules as me. working with friends in project groups has its pros and cons. it certainly comforted me to know that i can turn to them for support and not need to worry too much about sitting alone in lecture. although i do admit that i wish i had put myself out there more to group with other people in projects, to make new friends :) nonetheless, thank God for coursemate-friends in uni :") 

another 'source' of friends was from my cca. although we all studied at different faculties and are at different years, we kinda managed to take UE / GEMs together! it was q fun attending classes with cca friends :) i'll certainly miss spending evenings in the studio practicing dance routines, and the lovely mass dinners we have together at food clique or at YIH. these moments really bonded my friends and i. i've learnt that when one is really passionate about something, one will make time for it. no matter how packed my timetable was, i'd squeeze time to meet friends or go for dance. anything that can get my head out of academics! i used to be the go-home-straight-after-school girl in JC and secondary school, but uni was different. 

i spent fridays at cell in school. i'm thankful for a cell that is specially for arts students. somehow it's easier to talk to each other and we see one another along the corridors more often too. i used to have free fridays throughout year 1 to 3, but coming all the way back to school to meet this community of supportive and loving friends was totally worth it. 

it was definitely so hard to choose between dance and church-related activities. both are my passion! i have missed so many events that fell on friday nights, i have rejected performance opportunities just because most of the practice fell on friday nights. yet i also made it clear to my dance friends that if we had pracs on friday nights, i wouldn't be able to make it. making it clear where your priorities are is so important, especially for christians. i often asked God how i can be a testimony for Him in school and a small way was to let people know that my friday nights are blocked out for cell. it was intimidating and i was embarrassed about it at first. but as i grew and i saw the value of gathering as a community, i because less ashamed of mentioning about my activities in cell. 

if you are a fellow christian out there too, trust me when i encourage you to put God first in all that you do and invest your time and energy into His kingdom purposes. of course, i'm definitely not asking to devote all 5 days to church-related activities oh no. my personal conviction is that one can play all they want from mon till thurs, but if there is a time set apart for cell and church service, let it remain a sacred time for God. and in the decisions you make, always pray and seek after God's will for you! He hears your prayers and answers them in His perfect timing. as you honor Him in uni, He will honor you too! God desires to bless you out of His unfailing love for you :)

Isaiah 55:8-9 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the LORD. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."

yup, so these are just a few things i wanna wrap up uni with. i'm definitely terrified of entering the working world but i want to trust that God will protect me and provide for me through it all :) 

so alas, go! try new things, step out of your comfort zone, have fun. you never know what wonderful memories you can make when you do so :) uni is more than just grades, it's about personal growth and discovery too! 

till next time, take care!

ps, if you have some questions about God or you are interested to know more about who this God is, leave a comment and i'll gladly share with you more! there are no silly questions :) 

Year 4, Semester 2

ahh, can't believe that this is the last module review post i'll be doing :(( it's so bittersweet. 

PL4228 Criminal Forensic Psychology

Lecturer: Prof Chu Chi Meng

Prof Chu is actually from MSF! so he has many stories to tell. He's a pretty chill lecturer haha. we only got him for a couple of weeks because the other weeks were taught either by Jen (another MSF officer) or invited speakers. His slides are very neat and concise, easy to digest. 

Seminar:

The seminars were interesting because there is a different speaker almost every other week! it's nice to hear stories by people from the ground itself, it makes it all much more realistic and applicable. Seminars were mostly just us listening and taking down notes. there were minimal discussion times. But the readings were not mentioned during the seminars and sometimes it doesn't even follow the schedule :o 

Workload: 4.5/5

This module's workload is manageable if you're consistent. There are SO many readings, 1 week can easily have 6 readings of more than 10 pages each! Madness. Most of my time spent on this module was clearing the weekly readings. but tbh if you don't read it you aren't missing out on much because it isn't mentioned or linked during class time. yet, it'll be a mistake to neglect it and leave it till the end because there is simply too many readings to take note of! 

Grading:

40% Essay

Prof released the essay instructions during the first few weeks of the sem and it's due towards the end of the sem. of course, most of us would leave it till the last minute to do it haha. the essay was about comparing the pros and cons of 2 different treatment frameworks. as simple as that sounds, it isn't! so much research had to be done and we had to craft our own opinions into it too so it was a challenge. there was strictly no extension of deadline for us and there were no marking rubrics given either. 

10% Attendance

Attendance is taken every seminar but i don't think class participation is counted. my class was super quiet, we hardly asked questions haha. 

10% Presentation

Prof let us choose our own groups and a theory to present on. He gave us the space for creativity on how to present it. some groups recorded a drawing video and narrated it, some acted it out, my group simply presented it haha. my biggest regret for this mod was not thinking out of the box for our presentation

40% Finals

There is no mid-term for this module, just an essay due. 

Finals was 50MCQ over 13 weeks of content and readings. The content is not too heavy and it was interesting too, so it wasn't too painful to study for it. Prof asks really detailed questions like which section of the law was this from. or he'd test the subpoints that he mentions in class instead of the main points. he does test the readings too and minute details like what population was used LOL. that really caught me off guard. i think the bell curve is gonna be quite steep..

I'm really glad that i took this mod because i've always wanted to take it since i started majoring in psych. although i learnt that i don't want to be a forensic psychologist, the content i learnt is something i won't get anywhere else. it was a really eye opening experience. I'd recommend to take this module because it's an eye-opening experience to hear about a side of Singapore that is hardly talked about. :) 

PL4236 Autism Spectrum and its Related Disorders

Lecturer: Prof Iliana Magiati

Prof Iliana is the most pro-active prof i've had. She is so passionate and knowledgable about her field of expertise. she's from greece and she has v nice eye color hahaha. She was very flexible with the assignment deadlines. she actually changed our deadlines to accommodate to those taking thesis so that the deadlines wouldn't clash with thesis, how thoughtful of her! she'd always ask for our feedback and opinion and she really takes into account what we feedback to her. apparently this sem's workload is lesser than last sems but tbh it's still q heavy haha. 

Seminar:

There is a significant amount of time spent for discussions and sharing. it's nice to have a vocal class and peers who had working experience with children with autism. there's a lot of pair sharing during class. although i dreaded it because who wants to talk at 8am, it was good because it made me recall what i've learnt and apply it to real-life questions. Prof would walk around and give us her opinions too. it was a relaxed and comfortable learning environment. i really enjoyed this class because it's so light-hearted.

This module is a blended classroom one, so we had weekly pre-class activities to do, on top of our assignments and readings.. but the pre-class activities were okay because we just had to watch some videos and answer some simple questions. nothing too difficult. 

Workload: 5/5

The workload is the heaviest of them all! There are so many grading components for this module that i was constantly doing work for this mod. After finishing the first case report, I had to quickly prep for mid terms. and after that quickly start on the second case report while prepping the group project as well. and after that it's prepping for the final quiz. It was rather hectic and there was no time to breathe. But writing the case reports helped consolidate what we have learnt so in a sense we were revising on the way. Readings were manageable, about 2-3 per week only and there were short ones phew! the readings were enjoyable too, not too technical or difficult to understand. There were pre-class activity worksheets to be completed too, that took up some time.  

Grading:

15% Case Report 1

The 2 case reports were based on the movie Temple Grandin. So we had to treat her as if a client and write an analysis about her symptoms and diagnosis. It was SUPER time consuming because case report is a new thing for most of us. we had to watch the movie ourselves and take down notes on the way. and then figure out how to structure our essay and how to report it within a limited word count. madness it took me 3 weeks to do this essay. Prof was very nice, she gave us specific and useful guidelines and rubrics to follow for all of the assignments, so as to check our progress. She's very meticulous in her marking too, she'd even edit my essay to help me phrase it better lol. 

25% Quiz 1

It was a short mid term quiz in class, consisting of MCQ and SAQ and fill in the blanks. There is so much content to remember since the first few weeks were about symptoms and diagnoses so the quiz really tested our memory on that. 

20% Group Poster + Presentation

This was extremely time consuming as well, mostly because my friend and i volunteered to design the poster while the rest find the information to be put into the poster. i thought creating a scientific infographic is easy, IT IS SO TOUGH. to squeeze so much content into an A1 paper is tougher than i thought! My group didn't do as well as other groups because our poster was too scarce lol. but we were just following the prof's guidelines of a clean and concise poster :(( The presentation time limit was 5 min so it was quite mad during the presentation. Thankfully, i had a pro-active and cooperative group who was quite on the ball for this project. it was enjoyable working with them :)

25% Case Report 2

This report was a follow up of the first one, where we had to analyze Temple's environment and how it contributed to her diagnosis. It was also quite time consuming. 

15% Quiz 2

This quiz was held on w13 online, so we could do it otot with our notes! i thought we'd score well for it but turned out my friends and i got 25th percentile and we were SHOCKED. like how even??? honestly it is still quite discouraging.. shows how steep the bellcurve is. the test consisted of MCQ and SAQ. but each MCQ was worth 5 marks, crazy!! 

Overall, this module was quite enjoyable too :) i learnt so much and it gave me a new desire to want to reach out to people with autism. the only down side i can say is that it's really time consuming.. so take it if you're interested in the content otherwise it'll be so hard!

PL4239 Social Psychology of the Unconscious

Lecturer: Dr Jia Lile

Prof Jia is really nice! he replies emails really quickly too haha. He is approachable and gives good feedback. He's pretty chill in class and his slides are clean enough. He shows us videos to illustrate concepts and occasionally has in-class activities to engage us. Also, he memorized every one's names, i'm shocked! he personally returned us our mid term papers by going around class himself. i'm really shocked hahaha. 

Seminar:

The usual routine for class is that prof will open the class with his teaching, and then it'll be student presentations that is part of his content for the day, and then he will end the class with his teaching. it was interesting to see how prof incorporated student presentations into the weekly content, instead of just having the presentation and then the end. ya gets? hahaha. All discussion times come during the group presentation time. My class was quite quiet so there weren't many questions asked either. 

Workload: 3.5/5

i'd say that the workload is the lightest among all the modules this sem. there are about 2 readings weekly, all scientific papers. the readings were not too hard to understand and were quite interesting too. my group was the first one to present over the entire sem so that huge hurdle was done by w4, which was great! so it was just prepping the readings beforehand for each class. 

Grading:

10% Participation

Prof was understanding, he knew that not every one is vocal in class so he opened up a forum on IVLE to let us voice our opinions weekly. this is a really great strategy because i don't dare to speak up in class and writing in the forum gives me more time to think about the content that i want to share. it was definitely less intimidating and pressurizing. 

30% Mid-term

mid term was open book but there was so little time to refer. Prof tested somewhat similar concepts but it was more of extending the knowledge we have learnt or combining several topics together. honestly it was quite tough..

20% Group Presentation

We just had to present one of the readings in 10ish minutes, the usual :) prof didn't ask us too difficult questions. in fact, we were the ones asking him questions instead haha. he emphasized on class engagement so different groups came up with different ways to engage the class during the discussion portion. i had a pleasant discussion time with my class because my groupmates and i facilitated a two-way discussion instead of just letting the class discuss among themselves. 

40% Final Paper

There is no exam for this module, but our finals was a written scientific paper. we had to come up with our own topic (anything!), craft an intro, method, results and discussion section for our hypothetical study. it was honestly quite tough for me because i've never written a scientific paper by myself before. so much time was put into this, i hope it pays off :o it was so tough brainstorming for a topic. but prof jia is super thoughtful, he gave us an optional submission of a draft of our proposed idea and he will 'verify' it. and he also allowed us to send in drafts during reading week and he would give us comments. it was really helpful, i appreciated it so much. 

i guess this module was the least interesting of all because it's not as applicable irl compared to the other 2 mods. as in, it's not thattt practical. honestly i took it because there was no exam haha. the content was a bittt confusing but it isn't too hard to grasp. it was slightly familiar because some of the key terms were learnt during pl1101 or pl3235. i'd say, take this module if you're interested in it :) 

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Overall, this sem is chill yet hectic. chill in the sense i am hardly in school, twice a week only! but hectic because there's a constant flow of work daily. be it readings or doing essays or prepping group work. it certainly wasn't a relaxing last sem haha. I enjoyed what i learnt this sem and it saddens me to know that i will no longer be around to take more interesting modules :( thankfully i had a constant friend throughout my 3 modules and it was really nice being able to bounce ideas off each other and accompany one another during our break times. ironically, not being in school so often made it harder for me to meet friends, since they're mostly in school haha. but thankfully i got to meet and spend time with the people i love :) 

This sem has been so different. everything feels more precious than ever, every moment is cherished and enjoyed. studying for exams wasn't too bad because it was my last time doing so. year 4 has been good. I tried as many new things as possible and it was pretty fun! i'm really gonna miss going for classes and learning new things :") cherish every moment you have in uni!!

perhaps i'll write a separate post about my thoughts about uni :) till then, have a wonderful summer holiday and just enjoyyyy yourself! 

God bless!