Course + Year: NUS BA (Hons) in Communications & New Media Y4, minor in Chinese Translation
Communications and New Media is a course about how the concept of communication is ever-evolving. If you understand “communication” in the broadest sense, it’s not just about me talking to you, it is about any form of communication, including more unexpected ones like games and artificial intelligence. That’s how the new media part of communications and new media plays an important role in shaping our understanding of what communications is about. If you’re interested in researching new modes of communication, this course will be quite interesting to you.
You also get to study marketing and publicity, if you choose the right modules. I think PR is one section of communications. We do more than that for our course. You could even do film modules!
CNM has some specialisation routes, but we don’t really call it a specialisation route since it doesn’t appear on your transcript.
I chose mass comms because it was something that I was very confident of doing, I thought that I was good at writing for all things media, design and the technical skills involved in mass communications.
It was the natural next step after graduating from poly with a mass Comms diploma. Honestly, I could have gone on to work, like what a lot of my mass comm friends in poly did. I guess I wasn’t ready for that and was procrastinating getting into the workforce. I think I was lucky to have the time and the resources for going to university.
A lot of people think University is where you get a degree, a piece of paper, for a higher starting pay, but to think of it another way, it is also a place for you to network with people who you can tap onto next time. You never know when you will need their help. It is also about the skills you learn in university. You do learn skills in critical thinking along the way.
A lot of people think that a degree is pretty much useless since most university graduates end up working in areas unrelated to their degree. I beg to differ because University is really about the journey of learning, gaining critical thinking skills – and sometimes, it is also about learning how to learn. I’m quite surprised about how we are only taught to really think critically in university. I don’t think anyone will regret ever going to university.
Mass Comms at poly was more focused on the practical aspects as you would learn technical skills like how to operate a camera, how to write for newspapers and publications. In that sense, it is good to gain experience first because these are the skills you will need in a job. We also had to do a few theory modules, like media law for example.
CNM is more focused on theory. It’s learning about theories of mass communication, how media theorists explain how the media influences the public. I find it interesting to learn because it helps us make sense of our world. Do movies really make people violent? Do video games make people violent? These are some questions we explore in CNM. We also do learn about practical stuff – there are electives that teach you how to film too, in case you have no idea how to do those things.
I think we do have a head start. Then again, in my time in 2017, it was quite hard to apply for university with even a pretty good GPA. The quota for poly candidate admission is getting higher, so it should be easier for poly graduates to get into university. I thought I had a pretty good GPA but I only got into university on my second try.
A lot of times I felt during my University education that I was doing a better job than my peers so it was pretty ironic that it was harder for me to get into University. In that sense, JC kids do have it better because the rigour in their education makes them a bit more eligible to get into university a bit more easily. However, I believe that these requirements are changing so I hope it’s better.
I don’t think that’s the case. I wouldn’t say that our poly mass comms education is that restrictive. At the end of the day, it is what you’re interested in because there are some people who go through mass comms in poly and realise that it’s not their thing.
I feel that in University a lot of people have this expectation that we should be spoon-fed a lot of information especially since we’ve paid so much school fees. But I feel that you are expected to do a lot of indecent learning at university. You can ask the professor if you are unclear, but profs do expect you to learn things on your own, including things you don’t know.
Interesting thing is that I did apply for Wee Kim Wee School of Communications twice. The first time I applied for university I applied to WKW and NUS FASS. However, I did not get into either school. So, I was stuck in limbo for one year and I was on the verge of trying to study overseas. The second year, I tried again for Singapore Universities. I applied for SMU’s School of Social Sciences, NUS FASS and WKW. I got into NUS and SMU. It wasn’t really about choice, since my first choice was NTU’s WKW. SMU only got back to me much later. They had an error in their system and they told me that they were supposed to send me an offer letter much earlier. However, they only told me this after I accepted NUS, so I was working under the assumption that I was only accepted by NUS.
Since I got into NUS, I was like, “eh, it’s not bad what!”. For people who choose to do communications, they are often faced with the choice of NUS FASS or NTU WKW. A lot of people think that WKW is the gold standard because it is an incredibly hard school to get into, even with a good GPA. I realised from speaking with people who had higher GPAs than me but got rejected that maybe it’s not about the GPA but your portfolio. I do think that WKW has its advantages, as they are a good school to give you the training to get into broadcast, journalism and TV journalism. A lot of people who graduate from WKW do work at SPH, MediaCorp, PR and marketing. You must understand that once you get into WKW, you are stuck in that route of being trained for the media industry.
If you are really sure that that is your path, then good for you. Some people might not know what they want, so that’s the good thing about going into NUS FASS. FASS works by getting you in the first year to do exposure modules from different baskets, which allows you to have a taste of what each major is like. Being in FASS also exposes you to people from different courses, and opens you to a lot more perspectives than in other schools where your major is already fixed.
I always thought that I was pretty okay with the Chinese language. I only started taking those modules in Year 2 because I was thinking, “why not”. One of the reasons why I was interested in NUS was also because they have a minor in Chinese Translation. I’m still paying the price because I decided to do the minor too late. It’s best if you can spread out the modules. If you’re serious about doing a minor, then you should make the decision at the start of your candidature.
For FASS, we don’t go in with a fixed major. You know about exposure modules, right? I think it is worthy of mentioning that the exposure modules you do aren’t very representative of the major itself. You could hate NM01 Introduction to Communications and New Media, but you could really enjoy the deeper modules. Introductory modules are very broad, and they get you to learn as much as possible in 13 weeks. Having to do an exam that allows you to retain such information may be quite off-putting. But you shouldn’t judge a course based on Introductory modules!
Module planning is something you would have to learn along the way. In year one I was consistently warned by seniors to not take 3 exposure modules in one semester because you have to memorise a lot more things. What happens if two of your exposure modules have the same exam date? Usually, when we plan modules, we make sure their exams do not clash, and if so, we think about whether we can possibly prepare for both. Very importantly you have to look at the degree requirements when you plan. Just google your course and graduation requirements. I just recently heard from a friend in Year 3 that she read the requirements wrongly and hasn’t taken some required modules.
Year 3 Sem 1 I did an internship, Year 3 Sem 2 I was on exchange at the University of Texas. I was supposed to be there till June but I was called back, so I had to do some of the modules online. For CNM, it is compulsory for you to do an internship. It is worth 12 MCs, or 3 modules. They grade your internship in two parts. One part is how your employer evaluates you and the other part is your report on what you learnt during the internship. You have to write it well, show that you learnt something.
For your internship to be counted towards your degree, it has to have a certain rigour that the school insists on. The school will be in contact with a slew of companies, and they stand by these internship programs. If you wish to source for internships yourself, you have to get the company to send a proposal to the school which describes what the internship has to offer. So, if you wish to self source internships, you should look early.
Students usually do 20MCs, or 5 modules, every semester. When you do your internship, you can go for Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC). They are courses that are condensed and can be taken as MCs. There was a bit of unhappiness because students found it hard to cope with having to go for MOOCs, which are night classes, during a full-time internship. I think our department is trying to review this.
I did it at Wilhelmsen which is a marine shipping company. I did marketing and video production for them. It was a very unconventional choice in the sense that it was not an industry that I would get into. I liked the environment as my supervisor was very welcoming towards people who have no prior experience in the field.
Exchange is quite tricky because you have to do a lot of work to make sure that the modules you take overseas are transferable. You need to be strategic about the time you email NUS or the overseas school. If your modules are not transferable, you will be taking the modules for nothing.
It’s usually lectures and tutorials. For some hands-on modules, they will call them practicals or seminars. There are also some modules that have seminars because the number of students they have is less than 20. For most introductory modules, since there are many people taking the mod, there are mostly lectures.
Grading depends on the module. There’s always the element of class participation. There’s also exams and assignments. Exams and class participation are the things that most people are concerned about. There are also certain modules without exams.
CNM is unique in the sense that we have a lot of modules that are focused on projects, so there’s a lot of group work. This is important because you need to work with different people in the media industry. There are projects that require you to create media campaigns, or proposals and a final report. There was once I had to work with people to come up with a film. It really depends on what module you’re taking.
To be honest, I totally forgot already. If you realise, I spent one year out of NUS. It’s hard to say because your day really depends on how you plan your timetable. NUSMods is where you plan your timetable. Some people also work part-time while studying. There are some people who’re okay with an 8am-6pm timetable because they want a 2 day work week.
It depends on your module. There is no safe way to gauge your workload by the level of the module. You should look at the requirements — what assignments you have to do and what exams you have to take. I would say it’s similar to the workload in Poly, but maybe a bit heavier because in Uni there’s a greater focus on the academic side of things.
I loved Introduction to theatre and performance. That’s one of my most favourite modules because you get to learn how to act and put up a play with your friends. I still remember we would meet on Sunday mornings to rehearse for our plays. It’s a fun module but it’s also notorious for having a very hard exam. A lot of people enjoy the acting part, but the exam part is oof.
I liked Introduction to media writing or photographic and video storytelling. Introduction to media writing is writing for news or PR. You get to understand how journalists are expected to write their articles. News writing is also about how you convey the most important information about the news in the first paragraph. News companies compete for attention, so if you don’t write good headlines you are failing your editor.
For Photographic and video storytelling, you get to make a film. You get to function like a production company — look for actors online, produce your own film etc. It was really fun going through the whole process.
I wouldn’t say I hated any module. I enjoyed the coding module, even though some people don’t enjoy it. It was fun to learn and understand how the algorithms worked. I mean it boils down to the fact that in Uni you need to adopt an open mindset in learning different things.
I guess in terms of the outcome, if you’re doing honours, it means that you get a degree with the phrase “with honours”. If you don’t do honours, you will get a Bachelor of Arts. If you do, you will get a Bachelor’s of Social Science. It’s just what kind of degree you want to get, and what you want out of your university education. Some people don’t see the point of spending four years at university, especially since you can finish the course in 3 years. There’s this notion that if you get an honours degree you get a higher starting pay, and I think that’s true to a certain extent especially when it comes to jobs in the civil service. If you want to work in the government sector it makes total sense to get an honours degree.
When you get into University, you don’t have to decide right away whether you want to do honours. If you want to do honours, you have to do 8 levels 4000 modules to graduate with an honours degree.
I’ve never really thought about the question because a lot of it boils down to whether I have the time to spare – I’m not in a rush to get a job, and I do have the time, so I could. I think University is a precious period of our lives in which we get our last taste of freedom before we get a job and get tied down to various things. I enjoyed my university experience and I don’t mind doing it for another year.
I don’t think there’s a kind of person who’s suited to do CNM. In CNM, you see all kinds of people. Even though there’s this notion that CNM people are woke and outspoken, I think the most important thing is to be interested in what we are doing. When I was deciding what to do in Poly, I was told that mass comms people have a lot of politics going on.
At the end of the day, there will be such people everywhere and it’s something you have to get used to. I don’t think it’s right if anyone is stopped by these concerns to join CNM. For me, the people I’ve met in CNM have been really nice.
A lot of people say that if you join CNM, you will be a journalist, radio DJ, news anchor etc. It’s not true. Nowadays, people who do CNM have a lot more prospects. CNM graduates can do just about anything, since CNM is about communication, and every job requires it. So, you could thrive in any job. When I tell people that I’m from CNM, they often expect me to want to become a journalist or DJ. I’m like – no! Honestly, I have thought of becoming one of these roles but I don’t want to confirm those stereotypes.
Honestly no. I went into the course without having very specific expectations. Uni is a time in my life that I want to explore, and to gain friends along the way as well. I won’t say that there were any expectations that weren’t met from this journey.
I still ah? Not really leh. I honestly was concerned that CNM would not be as good as WKW. I guess so far I really enjoy all the modules that I took in CNM and also the bigger environment in NUS. At the end of the day, you get into a course also because of its environment. Like I said just now, if you get into WKW, you’re getting yourself into this fixed route. If that’s what you want, that’s good. But for me, I wasn’t very sure, so FASS was a good place to be, including being able to take a minor in Chinese Translation, which I wouldn’t be able to take if I were in another school. I’m also in a few CCAs that I wouldn’t be in if I were not in NUS.
I think it’s also about whether you would like that kind of vibrant life that NUS offers you with its range of CCAs. I think that’s a very important factor to consider.
At the end of the day, I wouldn’t say that there’s a very important thing that I’ve learnt specifically from CNM, it’s more of what I learnt from University. The one very important thing I learnt was having to be independent while learning, that I can’t expect people to teach me what I want to know.
From CNM, the most important thing I’ve learnt is the power of the media. A lot of people don’t realise the power we, as future media professionals, have to shape the culture of society. We do have a lot of power in our hands to define that narrative and change the narratives in people’s minds. We are the messenger between businesses and consumers. Sometimes it’s not about the what’s but the how’s. You might have a good message with a bad design, and people will judge you at the end of the day for that bad design. So your presentation and delivery is important as well.
Like I said, besides PR, marketing, there’s really nothing that stops you from doing anything else. It’s a multipurpose degree. It’s 2020, and especially in COVID, all businesses have found the need to reach out to customers online, and that’s where your skills as a CNM graduate is useful. If they have not digitised, they will find trouble reaching out to people online. I would say that CNM is a pretty appropriate degree because of this.
Actually, the internships that I was looking at were mostly PR, social media management, graphic design and marketing related. Those were the internships that I saw, but there’s also the possibility of selfsourcing. You are free to source for other internships and reason with the department why it is relevant for the degree.
I don’t stay there because I live really near school. I think that hall life is a very special part of NUS life in the sense that a lot of people do things in hall that makes up a large part of their University life. Hall life is something that people should look at when they get into NUS. Different halls have different niches, for example, Raffles hall is focused on the arts. Thus there’s a module on musical production that students in Raffles hall can take because it is held in Raffles Hall. I think what the halls offer is worthy of consideration.
I’m in NUS Voices, which is a Mandopop CCA. We consist of vocalists and instrumentalists. We have keyboardists, guitarists, drummers, violinists even. We meet about twice a week during the semester to jam, do music and some gigs now and then. I will say that NUS Voices that being in NUS is one of the best choices I’ve ever taken. Sometimes I think that if I had insisted on being in NTU I wouldn’t have this vibrant life that I have in NUS. I really have no regrets about entering CNM because of all the opportunities that NUS has offered me.
I guess a lot of advice I have given on the way are: I guess module planning is important from the start, try to plan for exchange, if you do want to go on an exchange. Independence is also important because you have to get a lot of information proactively. You have to stay active and in the know, for admin things as well. For example, for S/U, there’s a very short window period for you to do that. Some people don’t even check their emails and forget to S/U, and their CAP will be affected. I mean things like that all connect to the idea of being an independent learner and not expecting people to feed you information.
I think you should find a good support group. NUS is a pretty big institution and you do need to be involved in communities that will support you. One way of doing it is going for the orientation camps. That’s an important thing to do because I can tell you that when you start Uni, you will feel lonely and be like, “Shit, what do I do now?” I can tell you that it’s very hard to make friends in classes or lectures because people will just be doing their own thing. The support system will also be able to feed you information — some people might forget to check their emails. Personally, I’ve been in a group of 6 friends from the start of Uni till now. They have been an instrumental part of my Uni life, and without them, I wouldn’t have known the things I do now.
I would think that it’s really down to your interest. There are rankings out there about which University is better and what the starting pay of each course’s graduates. At the end of the day, it’s really about what you want and the environment you like. You can get into a really prestigious course, but if you hate people there or don’t like the environment there, what’s the point? It could also be about location — some people don’t like to travel to school. It could be a very trivial concern but if it is one for yourself, respect it as a concern for yourself. It’s really down to personal preference but I think interest is really important. Everything else should be secondary.
University is where a lot of people learn similar things — how to make friends, how to think critically, how to be an independent learner, regardless of whatever major you’ve chosen. You will learn things that are unique to the major you’ve chosen but sometimes you will forget that when you graduate. It’s the soft skills that you’ve earned that will stay with you for the rest of your life. Those are the important skills that you will have to take with you, so just choose based on interest.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the interviewees and do not reflect the official policy or position of any institution. They are also not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, class, individual or organisation.
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