Module reviews for final semester

So before I start on my Korea posts, I shall do reviews for the modules I did in Year 3 sem 2 (Year 2011/2012) ! I did surprisingly okay especially when I had no confidence for so many of my papers. Shall not ramble on about how horrible they were and begin.

PL1101e: Introduction to psychology

Though I did pretty well for this module, I still wouldn't recommend anyone to take this module because it's a lot of memorising. Spent a lot of time on this module when I could have spent it on my core modules. Basically, if you still want to take this module, readings are at least 30-40 pages a week. One chapter to read and try to remember each week. And I would say reading once is not enough. For the entire semester, I think I read each chapter at least twice or trice. Don't think you can remember much if you just read it once.

And for the exams, the CA was 100 MCQs, and the CA was quite easy for a life science student like me because they tested quite a lot on biological psychology and I already knew about the autonomic and parasympathetic nervous system and the various hormones and neurotransmitters. Those parts were actually quite boring. Saw many year ones taking this module, probably because their level 1 modules were not that heavy. Hmm and I don't think lectures are necessary because they don't cover everything in that 2 hours and you are expected to know everything that are in the chapters anyway, not just stuff mentioned in the lectures. But! I think the lectures (some lecturers only) served to reinforce some concepts so I guess I didn't waste my time in going for them. Final exam was 100 MCQs and 5 essay questions. The MCQs in the final exams were more difficult compared to the CA. But no negative marking so I just guessed those I was unsure of. And essay questions are more concept based so be sure to know the theories and stuff.

Content wise, 5 aspects of psychology was covered, Biological, Social, Developmental, Abnormal and something else I can't remember. I basically only found abnormal psychology interesting. Oh and I felt that the tutorials were quite a waste of time because it is not graded at all and nothing much is covered as well. And you need to complete 6 hours of research participation, which for me was 12 psychology experiments. Again a waste of time but since I had no other module to take, I can't complain much.

Grade components: 50% final exam, 20% CA and 30% term paper. I didn't score well for the term paper which had quite a high percentage. Think I got a B which was below average. So in my opinion it didn't really matter though I was indeed quite worried that I wouldn't be able to pass it. So my advice is if you are interested in psychology, just buy the textbook and read. You will be much happier, really.

Okay and now for my other elective, FST2201

FST2201: Human nutrition

I strongly recommend this module because it was quite slack! Haha! Okay but be prepared to pay and throw all your points into this because the vacancies are very little and many people especially life sciences people will bid for it since well, food science is kind of related to life sciences. So I paid about 1700+ points for this. And indeed, it was quite worth it for the points I paid.

Content: There is only 13 sets of lecture notes and 2 lectures a week. And basically human nutrition is quite common sense, like what my friend says. She only brought her common sense into the exam. Okay I kid, you still need to read the lecture notes. But the lecture notes are very easy to understand so yes I'm really glad I took this module despite the clash in lab. Meaning that I had to miss the lecture when I have lab sessions for another module. But nothing much to be lost because I think the lecturer tests mostly what he prints in the notes and not what he says. The lecturer (Prof David Glen) was really nice because we couldn't make it for the CA (when it was during the lecture slot) but he allowed us to take it earlier. Which other lecturer will allow this! Okay I haven't met any other lecturer so I wouldn't know. But one thing to note is that the CA and final exam questions (all MCQs) were kind of weird, as in the questions were not really from the lecture notes but common sense or outside of the notes. For example, which cell cannot be regenerated when damaged. And the options were 'Brain, muscle, skin and something else'. This clearly was not taught and how is this related to nutrition??

Grade components: 60% final exam, 20% CA, 2 assignments which are 10% each. The assignments were easy like diet analysis and making of a poster.Sounds so secondary school like Home economics but quite time consuming as well.

So in conclusion, I recommend this module if you have points to spare(:

And now, for the most searched module that people come to my blog for. Okay not that many but I'll just review because I didn't see much reviews when I googled before I bid for it.

LSM4243: Tumor Biology

Okay so I bidded for this module because I was originally going to go on to Year 4 and do honours but halfway through the semester I kind of saw the light and realised that I couldn't see myself in a lab for the entire year. So I regretted taking LSM4243 for half a sem because it is going to be my elective. And who takes a level 4 module as an elective?! But I thank God for everything that He has done and who has been watching over me so that I did pretty well for it! I got a B+ for it, which was more than I could ask for.

Content: Hmm, this module was taught by 4 lecturers who I felt were pretty good, most of them at least. But do expect a lot of overlap in content because this is a tumor biology module and what the lectures cover will be just the apoptosis pathway, both intrinsic and extrinsic, the BCl2 family of pro-apoptosis and anti-apoptosis members, telomeres, telomerase, metastasis, genome instability, chromosomal translocations, caspases, tumor suppressor genes p53 and oncogenes. That's about it. No webcasts except for the last lecturer Dr Ong Siew Hwa, who webcasted her lectures so that people can re-watch them. I actually enjoyed the lectures because they were really interesting for some, and they really triggered me to think. Think: Would inhibition of telomerase be okay to cure cancer? But at the expense of shortening the lives of their future offspring. And also the effectiveness of chemotherapy drug in terms of curing cancer in the long term. Really interesting to me that I even considered doing honours project in cancer. But obviously the frightening thought of lab won the interest in cancer.

And it's a module that you can take alone (at least for my sem) because there is no group project or whatever that requires you to form groups or anything. So the foreveralones can take this module and not feel so ostracised. Okay just a joke because I was alone in the lectures as well.

No CAs for this module, but there were 3 written assignments which are given really early in the semester but you can't actually start on them early because it was on metastasis which was only taught in the last 4 weeks of the semester. At least I couldn't. The assignments are actually based on scientific papers. In a sense it's like comprehension, but at a much higher level. You need to use content from what you learn in the lectures and apply them to the questions. I did pretty well for them judging from how lousy I am at understanding the papers. I got about 70/100 for the assignment, which is good in my very humble opinion since I wasn't expecting much. Final exam was do-able because they really tested very general questions. Prof Reshma Taneja, Prof Shazib Pervaiz and Prof Ong Siew Hwa all tested very general stuff. Questions from the first 2 lecturers were quite easy but Prof Ong Siew Hwa's require you to pull everything about metastasis together, she already gave hints on what she expects and how we should answer her question, so I made mindmaps on the seed and soil hypothesis, metastasis in general and a whole load of other stuff. Her part was really quite heavy with a lot of things to remember.

Really need to comment on Prof Hande's question. I really scrapped through with some luck. Because he tested on this obscure 4 slides which he decided to add in, in addition to his last set of lecture notes. While studying, I decided to memorise those 4 slides just for fun and just in case. Not that I'm complaining, but I found it really really redundant, that he talked so much about telomerase, genomic instability only to test that last 4 weird slides. So the bottom line is to try to remember everything. I'm sure some stuff will get into your head and you'll be able to do well too. I'm not the type who can memorise word for word (find that really stupid actually) and really almost died studying for this module and cried so much because of stress but looking back now, I can say for sure that I don't regret taking it because I learnt so much from this and though I don't intend to do anything science related, I finally know why cancer occurs and how cancer spreads, something I have been thinking about since I was 17 or 18. And I'm glad, because I won't be left wondering why and how cancer spreads anymore.

I realise my reviews are peppered with personal opinions and sidetracking, but I just want to let these readers know that I'm no genius so if I can do it, so can they, especially if they're smarter than me:D

I have 2 more reviews but I shall save them for another day. So yes, I hope these reviews help. If you wish to know more you can leave a comment and I'll try to answer them if I can(: