Course + Year: NUS Geography Y2
Personal Experience/Preferences
JC. I was doing H1 Math, H2 History, Econs and Geography.
Yes.
When I was in JC, I was considering PPE (politics, philosophy and econs), Environmental Studies and Urban Planning. I think throughout A levels and post As, I realised what were the things that I didn’t like to study. Even though I was doing History and Econs, it felt as though Econs would have a lot of math at a higher level and I didn’t really like Math. For History, it’s just a personal preference. So, it was mainly decided by elimination.
I think Environmental Studies has some Bio and Life Sciences. I didn’t really want to do it either because I think when I was preparing for As, I started to realise what my interests were, which lie in human geography and policy making.
Firstly, I decided to study locally because studying overseas is very costly. Secondly, between the 3 main unis, geography was not available at SMU. So, it was eliminated. Then, geography at NTU was a lot more physical which was not the path that I wanted to go. So, it was very straightforward for me. And even after my A levels, I only applied for one place.
I would say for the first 2 semesters in Y1, we do a lot of common curriculums. There may only be 1-2 geography modules out of 5 or 6 modules. But once we reach Y2, it will be 3-4 out of 5 or 6 modules. And for Y3, it’ll be about 80% of modules.
At least for NUS geography, all the modules I have taken so far always have a weightage of 30% for group projects and about 10-20% for class participation. So, it’s about 50-60% for individual assessment.
A normal semester is 6 weeks before a recess week. Then, there’s another 6 weeks before a reading week which is followed by 2 weeks of finals.
For me, I’m in Y2 now. I experienced the entire Y1 first sem as a normal semester. Covid started in sem 2. I think I’ll say 2 different aspects. In a normal semester, we would usually have an average of 3 classes a day. Now, it’s weird because the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences (FASS) no longer exists. It’s the College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS). I’m not sure about that. All the lessons are usually either 2 hour lectures every week, 2 hour tutorials biweekly or 1 hour every week. So, it adds up to about 3 hours per module. There’s an average of 2-3 lessons a day. Because I’m staying in a residential college in Utown, breakfast and dinner is provided here. The norm would be to take modules with your friends. After lunch, I would meet friends at the bus stop and go for lessons. We may study for a while before heading back. Ever since Y1 sem 2 until now, almost all the lessons are conducted online. We spend almost all our time in our rooms. Physical lessons are very minimal now and I only have 2 physical lessons. I’m not used to it because we haven’t had physical lessons for a year. I think physical lessons now are mainly the same but in the past, lectures would have 100-200 people and tutorials would have 20-30 people. Now, we only have physical tutorials that have 25 people. We have to sit 2 seats apart from each person, so there’s no close group discussions. The semester now is very different from a normal semester.
I would say that for almost all the universities, there will be a common curriculum. There’ll definitely be modules that have MCQ for common curriculum. For geography, besides the 30% for group work, there will usually be 1 individual essay that is quite short (about 1000-2000 words). It sounds like it’s a lot but once you start uni, it’ll be considered short. The norm would be a 50% finals. In a normal semester like my Y1 sem 1, we will have the finals exam which will usually not have MCQ. If it does, it’ll take up about 10-20% of the finals. If not, there will be some short answer questions (1 or 2 paragraphs) and usually 2-3 essays. But now that we transited online, all my modules have a 40-50% final term submission. That means at the end of the semester, we’ll submit a 3000-4000 words essay on our own research topic. It is very much writing essays for individual components. For the group component, there won’t usually be essays because they want to do something different. So, it can be presentations, videos, posters and a lot of interesting things.
I would think at least for myself in geography, if you want to put in the bare minimum workload, it is quite easy to get away with doing less. If everybody contributes, you shouldn’t need to do excessive work. Because of the nature of online semesters, you don’t really need to study everything, as compared to the past when there were final exams and you needed to study every topic or at least 80-90% of the topics. But now that you’re choosing your own research for your final paper, you actually focus on about 2-3 topics. I prefer the online semester whereby unlike A levels, you’re not forced to memorise everything for the sake of exams. But you’re actually researching what you like and the workload depends on how much you want to do. I would say compared to other modules that have exams, this is much better because you’re not wasting your time learning some things that you may not be very interested in.
I think this discussion comes very frequently among my friends in uni also. Sometimes, we want to learn this or that such as some coding or software. But the thing is that outside of uni, there is usually a lack of structure and assessments. Given that everybody has busy lives, it would usually mean that you’d sleep off unless you have a lot of discipline. In uni, it’s as if you know your brain wants to do it but your body doesn’t but you still have to do it. Whereas if you want to do it outside of uni and in your own free time, if your brain doesn’t want to do it, you just wouldn’t do it.
At least in NUS geography, there aren’t specific specialisations. There are level 1000, 2000, 3000 and 4000 modules which are categorised into 3 different baskets. Firstly, it is physical geography. Secondly, it is political economy and space which deals with more of the economic and policy making side. And the third would be social / cultural which looks at the way the environment is affected. I would take more modules in the last 2. It is part of the curriculum that you have to do at least 2 higher level modules from these baskets, so you’d get more exposure but not a lot. There are also specialisations in minors. There are geography specialised minors in urban studies where you have to take some real estate or econs modules. There’s also specialisations in environmental studies which is with life science. And there’s specialisations with Geog Info Systems (GIS). There’s some basic coding and software that deals with maths. I think there’s one more which is aquatic ecology which is about science and possibly a bit of engineering also.
I think they vary a lot. So far, I haven’t had good experience with certain profs because of the way they speak. We spend more effort trying to decipher what they are saying. There’s a very large difference in the quality of profs. Before uni even starts, I think it’s recommendable to talk to your seniors or friends. Besides looking at the module that you want to do, I think it is actually important to look at which prof is doing it because it makes a difference. If this is a recommended prof by your senior, then you should go and take his module by all means. I think the prof is a more important aspect.
I’m also doing a sociology minor and for minors, I only need to do 6 modules. I’ve done 3 modules (introductory, emotions and deviance) under the same prof. His name is George Raadics. For geography, I don’t really have favourite profs yet but so far, I like this prof who is focusing on tourism. His name is T C Chang. And there’s a very young prof who’s only in his 2-3rd year of teaching and looks like a Kpop star. He’s Shaun Teo. He does city planning and globalisation modules.
For geography, if you want to aim for first class honors, you have to do an honors thesis. Let me start to backtrack a bit. A normal module, for level 1000, 2000 and 3000, consists of 4 Modular Credits (MCs). This is a bit long but I’ll try to simplify. You have to fulfil 84 MCs for your major and 40/84 of them have to be level 4000 (5 MCs). Your honors thesis which is a semester long research on your own interest and that you have to approach the prof for has 15 MCs. If you want to get first class honors which is basically the highest grade, you must do an honors thesis. A normal semester consists of 20 MCs. If you’re not aiming for first class honors, you can still do an honors thesis. If not, you can do 3 more level 4000 modules. That isn’t a problem. So, you can not do a thesis. It’s up to you.
I think my most favourite part is the relevance of it. I would say the younger profs tend to make relevance of the content we study to the Singapore context. They’ll ask us to go out and take a look at the town planning, parks and all those. We see real life examples. For example, we see why the river beds in Bishan and Ang Mo Kio are as such. They’re actually man made and meant to prevent floods. We can see it rather than just learn from content. The thing that I don’t really like is when the more traditional professors tell us to read up old research papers from the 1980-1990s which are admittedly factually correct because science doesn’t change. Rocks are still rocks but if we are learning things that we don’t see and understand, we’re just learning for the sake of understanding how things work which is a little more boring and you really have to drag yourself to do that.
I think I’m not sure if it’s a requirement by the faculty to have 30% group work every module. That’s pretty high. There are times when you specifically go to the same module and even the same tutorial as your friend but the prof still chooses the group for you and you may meet random people who don’t work. It’s upsetting because 30% is actually quite a lot. But you live with it.
A common misconception among all my friends is that all we do is study rocks or weather which is not true. I think in Singapore, physical geography is very limited and obviously there are not many natural hazards. For me and my friends, we all intend to study the more human aspect of geography such as policy making and cultural things that people don’t understand. In the first place, there’s no clear definition of geography and it’s just the study of the world. So, it can be anything. People often relate to their experiences in secondary school and they conclude that we study the layers of the rocks and what’s inside which we only do in 1-2 modules and we’ll never see them again.
Actually, no. Because I think in uni, you choose what you want to do. You shouldn’t regret it if you’ve made the choice. I’m not sure how CHS would be but I think it’s the same whereby you can still change your major or specialisation until the end of Y2. I know quite a lot of my friends (at least 5-10) who have made slight changes to their majors at the start of Y2. The effects of your regretted decision are not major. For the first year, you’re doing a common curriculum. For me, I didn’t regret it, so I just stuck with it. I know of a friend who went from physics to sociology which is completely unrelated but life goes on.
Not that I know.
I think the student retention rate is very high because in the first place, the people who choose it are very few. Every year, the batch size is only about 80-100 for geography. It’s one of those majors around that would never die off but at the same time, it’s not as popular as econs or psychology. Those have more likelihood of people changing their minds because they could be very stressful. A lot of times, it’s also because they took it as their friends are doing it or their parents told them to do it. But for geography, you basically chose to do it.
The first one is being curious. The nature of the subject is that a lot of times, you’re doing your own research. If you’re going to do the bare minimum, there’s no structure. For example, econs may be a lot more structured and you have to do questions. But for geog, you do your own things you want to find out. The 2nd characteristic may be you want to make a difference in the world or see a different perspective because a lot of times, you would realise that media portrayal or academics has some intentions behind it. You’re able to do some research and find out what’s the contextualised meaning to Singapore. Lastly, there’s 30% for group work, so you would need to be flexible and not too fixated on your beliefs. At least in geography, we learn that there’s no absolutes. You can never say whether something is positive or negative because something that is economically positive could be socially and environmentally negative. One has to be open to suggestions and discussions.
I would think that most of my friends want to do some sort of government statutory boards such as Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), Housing and Development Board (HDB), Land Transport Authority (LTA) and National Environment Agency (NEA). Those are the first choices. Or even Singapore Tourism Board (STB) where there’s a lot of policy making and making small changes to society. The second choice could be things like marketing or HR.
Actually, I think my first 2 choices would be URA and STB because I think these 2 are very interesting. If not, I’m okay with LTA and NEA or even those like Central Provident Fund Board (CPFB) and Economic Development Board (EDB).
Actually, I think yes. Because I was quite inspired by my JC geography teacher who worked at URA before she became a teacher. She often shared with us what were the things she managed to implement and her time there. The way she saw her projects actually come to life inspired me to want to do this kind of work in the future.
Actually, not yet. For the first year, most of us would be involved in orientation before Y2. Internships only start in the Y2 summer holidays. I’ve not really done anything related specifically to geog.
Training, no. But there’s actually a compulsory module that everyone has to go through to learn how to write their resume and answer interview questions. A lot of people find that it’s a waste of time because it’s totally not related but I would think that if you go in with a positive mindset, you can still learn some things.
Yes.
For my major friends, not really. And a lot of people actually chose not to stay ever since Y1 because the lessons are online. But for me, I stayed because of the community life that we have. I still have a lot of friends within my residential college.
I would think that there’s a huge diversity of people around. At some point, you would definitely be able to find somebody whom you can connect with. If they’re doing the same major as you, you’re likely to do the same modules at least for the next 2-3 years before you delve into your specialisation. People are usually supportive and encouraging. If you’re not sure of something, there’s always somebody who’s willing to help you. If not, the profs and teaching assistants are usually responsive to emails. As long as you have any quick questions, you can ask them. If not, you can schedule a consultation which was in their office in the past but it’s an online Zoom meeting now. They’re quite okay with it. There’s definitely avenues to get help. It’s pretty encouraging.
Try to sign up for at least 1-2 freshmen camps and particularly camps for your major if you have decided. If not, sign up for at least your faculty camp. You may meet 2-3 people who’re going to do the same major as you. From there, you’re likely to do the same modules at least for the first 2 years. I think it’s very important to have friends going into uni. All these camps usually happen in June or July. Getting to know some people before school starts is a huge benefit. At least if you are blur, you won’t be blur alone. Or when there are actual classes by the time uni starts, you can go for classes together. It’s very rare to have friends from your JC or poly to go to the same course as you. For me, I only had 1 who’s doing it. Most of my friends are from my faculty camps.
Actually, I don’t have any particular NUS CCA. But within my residential college, I’m quite involved in other commitments. I play some sports and am in some interest groups. There are activities that will cater to you. Even if you’re busy, it’s more advisable to try to fill your time by doing something that you like besides studying. Otherwise, it’s not good for your mental health. At some point, if you’re still studying, I think there’s a diminishing return. You either get too tired that you’re not productive or you hate what you’re studying.
It’s quite interesting because I actually went for 1 overseas program in December 2019, just before Covid started. I’m in the University Scholars Programme (USP). It’s not really a scholarship but a program. In December 2019, we actually went to fishing villages in Malaysia to conduct ethnographic studies where we looked at the people there who are sort of left behind. But at the same time, their main source of economic progress is tourism. We actually kept in contact with them. Their tourism is not doing well but they’re doing pretty okay in terms of fishery exports. This was one of the overseas opportunities that I would have never signed up for if not for this 1 friend who convinced me to go. It’s a very short (2 weeks) program in December. My friend was quite interested and I was like “okay, sure”. We went and it was a very eye opening experience where we went to a real village that we will never see in Singapore.
Don’t be too stressed out about being uncertain. You may hear stories of people doing well or deciding what they want. Everybody has their own path, so don’t compare yourself to anyone or any path. Most of the time, people’s unhappiness comes from comparing themselves. Focus on yourself and take time to think about what you’re interested in or what difference you want to make to this world. If you want to make money, that’s also okay. You may want a better life for your family. Also, spend time on yourself. Don’t be too stressed out. I don’t think it’s applicable to anyone and everyone but if possible, you can learn a new sport. Everyone’s pretty encouraging. You can pick up a new sport for fun or to keep yourself active. If not, try to do some form of exercise. If there’s only 1 thing you need to remember, the most important thing is to get enough sleep everyday. If you don’t sleep, you’re just being unproductive and I think that’s worse. There’s a very toxic culture in Singapore about comparing how little they sleep or how much they work. But the most important is that those who sustain the energy are those who are able to manage themselves. So, rest sufficiently.
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