Bohemia Bunny

Prognostications Sem 2 07/08

May 8th, 2008 by lynnylchan under School Life

GEK1541: Reproductive Health: What One Must Know

Optimistic: A-

Pessimistic: B-

I refer to this as my sex-ed class, which is a very apt way of putting it. It’s run by a lecturing OB-GYN from the School of Medicine, and it’s enormously popular - it cost me 1500 CORS points. No, I don’t think the popularity is due to the content - at least, it’s not because we’re prurient. It’s because, bluntly speaking, it’s easy. C’mon, everyone has a set of “this” or “that” so the class runs mostly on common sense, actually.

The class covers basic anatomy, puberty, prenatal diagnosis and care (although not fetal development), contraception, abortion and menopause/andropause. It’s basically everything you should know about the reproductive feature of the biological machine commonly called the human body.

The true appeal of the class, however, lies in the extremely honest approach. A penis is a penis, a vagina is a vagina, and you better get used to these terms unless you want to spend 13 weeks blushing in embarrassment. For crying out loud - we watched videos of live births. We watched babies being forced out of vaginas, and while I had absolutely no problem with all of that, the poor dude in front of me was cringing at all the blood and poop. Sometimes, babies poop as they’re being born because they’re getting squeezed and they have no bowel control (duh). The miracle of birth - rather a messy affair.

And while it’s not part of the official syllabus, there was a lot of discussion on homosexuality and transsexuals, as well as sex workers. The lecturer did a good job in not being judgmental, but that’s part of being a doctor anyway.

I guess I learned quite a bit, even if most of the stuff is fairly common-sense. I already had a grasp of the basics, and I know quite a few medical terms so none of the stuff on contraception and abortion was new to me. The extra information for me came in the form of the lecturer’s expert knowledge on why certain medicines or procedures are preferred over others. Having taken classes with a few practitioners, I can say with confidence that those adjunct professors who have a day job in a practice bring something new and different to the classroom. Theory can only bring you so far, before you need to see what the situation on the ground is.

Anyway, the exam was a pretty standard 2-hour closed book multiple-choice paper. This is my one and only Medicine module so I can’t replicate the experience, but those folk do stuff slightly differently. Firstly, their answer sheet had 150 answers on one side. Standard NUS sheets have only 100. Plus, there was an “over” printed at the corner, and when I flipped it, answers 151-300 stared blankly back. The very idea of a 300-MCQ paper sounds like a monster from an academic horror story, like Cerberus and its 3 heads. Presumably, doctors have to recall everything extremely quickly, hence the different format.

In NUS, most papers have a time limit on when you can enter and exit. You can’t leave until the hour mark, even if you finish the paper in 30 minutes. However, this exam was different - the first person left slightly past the half-hour mark, I left just before the hour, and by that time the hall was more than half empty. Not that it was an easy paper. If it was, most of the class would have found it easy anyway, so I have no advantage there. Plus I made a few silly mistakes, so an A- would be a real boon. It used to be that my GEMs were default A-, but competition is stiff in these popular modules, especially since most of the class are 3rd and 4th years who already know the finer points of academic warfare. Moreover, my term paper came back with a B-, so the B+ to B range seems most probable.

PL4213: Cognitive Neuropsychology

Optimistic: A

Pessimistic: B

This is one of my few hopes for at least a decent A- grade. It’s the second time I’m taking a module with this lecturer, and I got an A for the previous one so that bodes well. Plus the content is rather similar - only hell of a lot deeper. I also did pretty okay on the midterm, 28/30, and 8/10 on the presentation. The range for the presentation was quite narrow - 7.5 to 9 - but at least I have a leg up on most of the class.

I kept falling asleep during this class - I blame the Monday afternoon timing, the stuffy classroom (it’s notorious for a faulty air-con) and the shuddering projector that for some reason just couldn’t hold still and project a stationary image. If you looked at the screen without blinking for long enough, you could detect a vertical oscillation, maybe at a frequency of 30-40 Hz. Just estimating. What all this boils down to is a very panicky Lynn during study week, going “what the hell is this I don’t remember learning this in class oh I must have been sleeping”.

But all in all, it wasn’t the worst possible module in the world, and I quite enjoyed myself because I had fun groupmates to sit and chat with whenever class got boring. The exam wasn’t a lot of fun, I did have writer’s block, so that probably erases my advantage a bit. In the end, I’d be perfectly happy with an A-, but considering the cutthroat competition in Honours-level classes, I might only have the 3rd years as a cushion and end up at the B- range. I seriously hope it won’t be that bad though.

PL4213, you’re my only hope (so far).

PL4219: Advanced Abnormal Psychology

Optimistic: B

Pessimistic: C

It’s not that I hate this module. In fact it’s a very informative and challenging module. But it is extremely heavy going, with a lot of emphasis on reading research papers, and I just found that part to be less than engaging. The adjunct professor knows his stuff, and had a lot of anecdotes and case studies to flesh out the otherwise theoretical module.

The whole class did pretty okay on the presentation, range was between 15-18, if I recall correctly. The midterm, however, really separated the wheat from the chaff, and it’s pretty obvious where I fell. This time, I am the cushion for other people to push up their grade (assuming the curve is in effect). Knowing you’re handicapped from the beginning just kind of reduces your motivation to do well. Yes, I know it’s counter-productive, but realistically speaking, not only am I disadvantaged, chances are, whatever I produce in the exam will be inferior to those of my classmates, simply because they absorbed the material better than I did.

So I pretty much gave this one up for dead. I showed up for the exam, spent 45 minutes drafting my essays because I didn’t understand what the question wanted from me, went for a toilet break halfway through (toilet was being cleaned, so I had to walk farther, what fun) and was in the middle of writing my concluding sentence when the dreaded “please put your pens down” came. Unwilling to see a pathetic incomplete clause, I broke out the correction fluid and erased it. So my essay ended with a comma.

After the exam I went for shopping therapy and blew more than 1000 bucks. That’s how bad the paper was.

Nah, I exaggerate. I went to IKEA to buy furniture for my new room.

At least the new furniture will be untainted by memories of the horrific experience I had with this module.

JS3213: Alternative Lives in Contemporary Japan

Optimistic: B+

Pessimistic: B-

Pretty narrow range of predictions there, but that’s because it ranges from “pretty bad” to “quite bad”.

The term paper came back with a B. That’s “bad”. I expected better, but apparently my paper wasn’t as deep as the lecturer would have liked, so it got downgraded. Oh well.

The final exam was open-book and quite easy. Or at least, it would have been, if I had read the bloody instructions.

After a lifetime of NUS 2-essay exam papers, this one came with 3 questions, of which I did the first 2. With 10 minutes to go, I looked one more time at the rubric. And goggled.

The third line of instructions read, “Answer ALL questions.”

I started writing furiously, and had one side of the argument down on paper when the time was up.

Utter stupidity. I don’t know what else to attribute it to. Attentional blindness. Over-reliance on schema. What it all boils down to is, the instructions were right there on the page, and somehow I understood the one before and the one after, but not the one that mattered.

I’ve given this one up for dead, too.

PL4208: Introduction to Counselling Psychology

Optimistic: A

Pessimistic: B-

The lecturer for this module is the same one that gave me an unpleasant surprise last semester, so this semester my vastly more experienced classmates and I pestered her for every bit of pertinent info so that we wouldn’t get nasty surprises again. We wanted to know how the presentations would be graded, what concepts would be tested, what was expected of us in the exam… we were all kan-cheong spiders and you’d be too, if you had been in my position last semester.

So far it looks decent, my group got an A for the presentation which she says is “a good grade”. However, she was unable to give me a numerical equivalent for this grade. Sure a triangle’s all fine and dandy, but it doesn’t give me much comfort if say, an A is 35/40 and a B- (the lowest presentation grade) is 30/40. Okay, I exaggerate, but you see the point of making the numerical grades transparent as well? My letter-grade advantage should carry over into the exam room! Assuming, of course, that our final performance doesn’t vary that greatly. Of course I could get a C for the final, while the B- kids get an A, and then who’d have the leg-up on who, eh?

I hope it won’t turn out that way though. I wrote 4 pages for each question, which should be enough to satiate an examiner’s thirst for information. It was nearly impossible to write any more, as I was writing all the way until time was called. I could have spent less time drafting the essays, but I didn’t want to risk being incoherent. So, all in all, I gave my best, which I think is of a pretty damn good standard, so an A- doesn’t seem like too much to ask.

But I’m not holding my breath, because turnabouts always happen just when you think the case is in the bag. Just ask Miles Edgeworth, Franziska Von Karma, or any other prosecutor with the bad luck to come up against Phoenix Wright.

Finally, none of this really matters in the long run - unless it causes me to downgrade my degree at the last minute (KNOCK ON WOOD!). I already have a job, I’m done with school, and it looks to be that way for the rest of my life. I can’t stomach the idea of more school at the moment. Maybe in a few years’ time I’ll start longing for the carefree campus life again, but right now I just want to let my brain (and wrist) recover.