AY20/21 Y3S2 Review

So, I underloaded the last sem due to a rather unsuccessful course registration that messed up my plans lol so I ended up taking only 15AUs.  BUT, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because the mods I took this sem were quite content-heavy/heavy workload.  Will underloading manage to pull up my GPA?  I don't think so, but at least it won't drop significantly (I hope) hahah 😂 Oh and because my friends and I took different combinations of yr3 mods last sem, so we went into this sem with tips from the last sem.  Thus, in a way, we are better prepared to tackle the content which is awesome 😉 Oh, & I'm playing around with the blog themes so don't be surprised that the blog will look different from time to time lol

Side note: I somehow ended up writing a super long review this sem idk why hahah

CM3021 - Organometallic Chemistry | CORE | 3AU | A

5 Online Quizzes, 5 MCQs each (5%): 5%

6 Pre-Tutorial & Tutorial (10%)

5 Reflections (10%)

Midterm 1 (25%): 40/50 [average: 34]

Midterm 2 (25%): 49/60 [average: 35.1]

Midterm 3 (25%): 96/100 [average: 65, highest: 100]

There is a change in assessment this sem, compared to the last.  Last sem, there was finals, but this sem it became 100% CA with no finals.  I actually liked this arrangement as more time can be dedicated to studying for other mods during the study week & we are completely done with this module by Wk13.

1st half: The prof says that he doesn't wanna lecture the content as our attention will decrease with time (esp for 2hr lectures), so his style of teaching is different from traditional lectures which need some getting used to if you don't want to miss any deadlines lol.  To summarise what you need to do each week: watch bite-sized videos, attend the 2hr lecture (optional), do pre-tutorial & upload, attend physical tutorial & upload your answers, attend the 1hr lecture to do the reflection & upload.  As for the bite-sized videos, he does not upload the slides for those even though we tried to ask him for them 🙃 So, I'd suggest you pause and write down important pointers while watching, so you don't have to keep going back to the videos (altho you can, if you remember that certain content was mentioned). I was quite annoyed, since it no longer was "bite-sized" videos, if we need to keep pausing & writing, so we actually spent quite a long time on them.  But okay,  it paid off since I did quite well for his midterm hahah.  During 2hr lecture time, he'll go through the key points of the topic as well as have some Learning Catalystics (LC) questions to gauge our understanding & have a Q&A session.  The 2hr lectures usually last less than an hour.  To my knowledge, the LC questions are not graded.  We also need to complete a pre-tutorial question (1 question only, with some parts occasionally) before the physical tutorial.  We need to upload our hand-written/drawn answers onto NTULearn.  You'll probably need to google/research/read journals to find the answers for the pre-tut.  During the physical tutorial, the prof will go through the pre-tutorial & give us an in-class tutorial question which we are to do & discuss in a group.  He'll go through the question before class ends & we have to take a picture of it & submit it before the end of the tutorial.  He does not upload the model answers to the pre-tut & tut questions, so you have to copy down what he says/writes during the physical tutorial.  Attendance for the physical tutorial is counted as we have to write our names on the group submission of the tutorial question.  But, he does not give us the physical marks for the pre-tut, tut & reflection, he'll just mark them & write his comments that's all.  He also mentioned that if we see all ticks, doesn't mean we got full marks.  Similarly, if he has commented on our answers, doesn't mean we have done badly.  He told us he does not want to disclose his marking scheme for pre-tut, tut & reflection.  Next, during the 1hr lecture, he'll upload a few questions (which he calls Reflection) we have to complete & submit within that hour.  It usually has around 4 questions with sub-parts.  We are required to turn on our camera while we do the reflection.  This arrangement was only required from reflection 2 onwards, so I suspect perhaps some students copied answers in reflection 1 & the prof wants to prevent it.  Lectures are conducted via Teams.  Since there are no finals, midterm 1 tested all topics taught by him.  Midterm 1 (2hrs) is open-book, open-internet but no communication allowed (duh), multiple submissions allowed & conducted online via Teams (video on) as well.  I heard from those who took this mod last sem that NTULearn crashed when everyone was trying to submit last minute so my game plan was to submit once first when I'm done, then upload again if I have any changes to my answers so that at least the system will have a record of my submission rather than no submission at all if NTULearn crashes.  Y'all can do this too.  Although, I do not know of anyone who experienced technical difficulties in my sem.  The midterm is not difficult if you have been consistent with the pre-tut, tut & reflections & understand them.  Oh and do not spend too long on a certain part, just move on first if you are not sure because there was a question which I had a long & short answer in mind, not sure what is he looking for but I just wrote the short answer & moved on. Turns out I was wrong but had I not moved on, I may not have completed the paper 🙃 Nonetheless, I was happy with my result :)

2nd half: It is the first time the 2nd half was taught by this prof, as the other prof left NTU, so we had no idea how this prof's (same prof as CM2021's 1st half) teaching style is like.  His lecturing style was the traditional style, 2hr & 1hr lectures were conducted via Blackboard Collaborate.  To me, the content is slightly easier than the 1st half (I think a lot of ppl will disagree but hear me out), because the content is such that once you understand the concepts (elementary reactions), it is quite repetitive for the other topics with a little bit of additional info/slight changes from the original concepts.  Whereas, 1st half content is like many distinct concepts that do not really link.  However, y'all may get lost by the information overload in the 1st few lectures, but as long as you spend some time, out of lecture time, to try the understand the different elementary reactions well then you'll be fine. Since midterm 2 & 3 are open-book (but conducted physically in school, 1hr each), so no memorization needed, just need to know where to find the information.  It is not open-internet unlike midterm 1.  Also, the prof will give hints for each midterm, pay attention to those & try to find examples elsewhere on what kind of questions he may ask & make sure you know the thought process towards answering the question.  Because it is impossible he tests on reactions that are already in your notes, so it's best to know the thought process like ask yourself: "What catalytic cycle is this"? "What is the valence electron count of the catalyst?" "What are the elementary reactions involved in this catalytic cycle?" "What are the conditions required for each elementary step?" "*catalytic cycle 1* has steps A, B, C. For step A, the catalyst needs to be/have *x*" "Does it already fulfil the conditions? If not, what needs to be done to the catalyst?" etc.  I managed to score high for midterm 3 because I managed to correctly spot the 3 questions in the paper, which saved me some thinking time during the exam.  In fact, after I flipped over the paper, I smiled & wanted to give myself an applause, but I quickly stopped myself after 1 clap lmao, ppl definitely thought I was weird 😂 Could have gotten full marks if I had not made careless mistakes 🙃 Oh & the prof says he will not test on the rate of reaction (depending on nature/substituents of starting material) for our sem, so I'm guessing he will test them next sem lol.  Please comment & let me know if I'm right 😉 Some tips: 1) sometimes the questions are either you can think of the steps or you cannot.  So if you get stuck, move on, as maybe you won't get mind block for the other questions. 2) each step in the reaction is worth 5marks (not sure if he'll change it in future), but you'll be able to gauge how many steps there are. 3) doesn't matter if your approach is different from your peers because as long as it makes sense, even though the route is longer, he'll give you full marks.

I actually enjoyed this entire mod, I hope yall will too :) Also, it's interesting how they disclose the marks of all the midterms because I thought since there were no finals, they will not disclose the marks for maybe 1 midterm lol

CM3041 - Physical & Biophysical Chemistry 2 | CORE | 3AU | A

Learning Catalytics (5%): ~4.9/5

8 Mastering Chemistry Homework (15%): ~14.7/15

Midterm (30%): 40/75 [average: 41.7, median: 43, highest: 73]

Finals (50%)

This is my most dreaded yr3 core mod 🙃 Don't know why quantum exists & why it is linked to chem hahah jk 😂 The LC questions are asked during lectures (not every lecture but you wouldn't know when they will be asked), as long as you submit an answer you will get 50% of the marks, if you get it correct then you will get 100% of the marks.  The LC questions are a way of encouraging students to attend lectures instead of watching recorded lectures but some people don't really bother since it is just 5% lol.  The 8 MC HW will take you an average of 2hrs to complete.  The number of questions ranges from 7 to 17, so you may do the HW in different sessions.  In the previous semester, they were given 6 attempts before you are marked wrong, but it became 2 attempts for our semester so take note.  I had the impression we had 6 attempts & lost some marks 🙃  You'll be able to find the solutions to most questions online I believe.  The midterm tested the entire 1st half & 1 topic from the 2nd half.  I think it is important that you try/understand the pyp/tut questions because the style of questions will be similar although you won't be able to guess what topics he'll test.  My midterm results were below average probably due to my severe lack of understanding & also I had CM3021 midterm on the same day, back to back.  You're allowed to bring 3 A4 handwritten/printed cheatsheets (6 sides) for both midterm & finals.  From my experience, writing almost everything from the slides will only take up about 3 sides & 5 sides for the midterm & finals respectively.  In the remaining space, you can write examples from difficult questions with answers you have encountered in pyp/tut or unit conversions that you don't remember by heart.  For the finals, the questions from the 1st half's content took me by surprise because the prof tested on a new model not taught before & expects you to know how to derive the answer yourself.  This tests a lot on your understanding of how the equations are derived from previously taught models instead of just blindly applying.  Thus, I have no idea how I fared for this module, just hoping for the best, I don't aspire for an A, but don't want a B lmao, wonder if it's possible.

1st half: Just some comments on the content, there will be a lot of foreign equations & content that you've never heard of, for example, Hamiltonian, eigenvalues, eigenenergies, etc.  Do not be afraid, just need to really spend time to understand & draw links between all the models & note how they differ.  I did not do this for the midterm & blindly applied & guessed which obviously did not work.  In pyp, the questions will explicitly tell you what model to use, but a question in our finals describes the model without telling us explicitly so we need to choose the right model with the right equations.  Oh, & the prof said this is not a math module, so there won't be a lot of intense integration & differentiation.  I think I was complacent as there was a question in our finals which I believed needed integration by parts & it became super complicated lol, but my friends weren't able to solve that part too, so I felt better hahah.  Anyway, my point is, try to still know how to do basic integration & differentiation.

2nd half: The content here is much easier, mostly calculations & some formulas we have seen before.  Be sure to not make careless mistakes in units conversions & be consistent with the units used.  Since everyone will probably "die" for 1st half so you need to "grab" all the marks you can from the 2nd half & not be careless!  Heard from my friend that in the previous semester, the prof surprised everyone by testing heavily on the concepts instead of calculation type questions in the finals.  So be sure to not only know how to apply the formulas but also know the concepts behind them.

Oh & due to time constraints (I think), both profs won't go through all pyp/tut questions, so if you get stuck or want to know the answers, you got to schedule consultations with the profs or discuss them with your friends.  Hope you survive this module lmao, definitely did not enjoy this module at all 🙃😂

Edit: How in the world did I get an A for this?! Must be the bell curve lol thankyou 😂

CM3061 - Chemistry & Biological Chemistry Lab 3 (LAB) | CORE | 3AU | B+

3 Lab Reports & 3 Proformas (50%): 1B, 2A for the lab reports. Proforma marks were not released

Finals (50%)

Due to Covid, we only need to attend 5 physical lab sessions to do a total of 5 experiments, with 1 virtual experiment (watch the video & use raw data to do proforma).  The experiments you do before recess week will require full lab reports (in journal format) submission, while the experiments you do after recess week will just require proforma submission.  There will be some weeks that you'll need to do 2 experiments.  For the experiments after recess week, you can choose which experiments to do each week, so long as you finish all experiments within the stipulated time.  There will be 1 submission date for all lab reports & 1 submission date for all proformas (different dates depending on which group you are in).  Except for the virtual experiment (another submission date for this; should be after recess week, meaning you can do the virtual experiment during recess week).  We are assigned to do either experiment 1 or 2 physically in the lab, but you'll need to know the content for both experiments in the finals, so it's best if you have friends doing the experiment different from you so you can ask them if you have any questions.

This module is less scary than CM2061, in my opinion, because the skills required are similar to  CM2061 (hope you remember them hahah but it's okay if you don't as you can always ask the TAs).  What makes this module quite "annoying", is how time-consuming writing the full journals can be.  Not only do you need to type everything in the format of the journal but you also need to draw the mechanisms using ChemDraw or any other platforms out there 🙃 For the finals, the prof did not disclose the format, so we had no idea if there were going to be MCQs, or a mixture of MCQs + open-ended questions or just open-ended questions only.  Turns out, we had 4 open-ended questions with a few parts.  They tested some structures of reagents/starting material in the lab manual, drawing of set-ups for certain experiments, one 10-mark question on proposing a synthesis route to synthesise the given product from the given starting material, a few questions on why common errors are faced by students in the lab & how to overcome them, and also certain working principles of lab equipment (rotary evaporator, liquid-liquid extraction).  I'm not sure if the format is going to be the same for subsequent years, but as usual, understand everything from the lab manual (understand why certain reagents were added like are they a catalyst/solvent/etc + why certain steps were done etc), know/memorize the structures of every reagent/substrate that appeared in the lab manual and know/memorize the mechanism for every reaction if applicable.  Speaking of mechanisms, they only released the marks & comments of our lab reports 1 day before our finals 🙃 but did not release the marks & comments for the proformas.  This means that we have no idea if the mechanism we submitted were correct or not & perhaps even studied the wrong mechanism for the finals ... Hence, I have zero clue how I'm going to fare for this module as well & hope for the best again 🤞🏻

CM9103 - Food Processing & Preservation | UE | 3AU | A+

Midterm 1 (25%): 24/25 [average: 20.8]

Midterm 2 (25%): 25/25 [average before remarking: 21.6]

Finals (50%)

Last elective for the food chemistry (FC) concentration!  There are no lab sessions for this module.  Due to a change in the school's policy(?) that the maximum weightage for finals should be 50%, the CA component changed from 40% previously to 50% now.  In the past, there will be 2 midterms, in which the better score of the 2 will be taken as your score for the 40%, but now both midterms (25% each) will be counted towards the total CA component.  Midterms comprise 25 MCQs each, while the finals comprise 3 short answer questions with many parts.  The content for this module is more difficult to digest than the other 2 FC electives, but somehow I scored better for this module?  I have no idea why lol but as with the other FC electives, there's no running away from memorization.  Be sure to allocate enough time to study for this module, unless you are planning to S/U it, because memorizing 100+ slides worth of content for 1 midterm is no easy feat.  Also, try out the pyp for finals & midterms because there may be similar questions again.  However, the prof said he is most likely leaving NTU after this semester, but the school is asking him to stay to teach longer, I'm not sure what is his final decision lol, but the prof & assessment format may differ from what I have experienced.

HW0228 - Scientific Communication II | GER-CORE | 2AU | A-

Assignment 1 - Critique (30%)

Assignment 2 - Report (40%)

Assignment 3 - Oral Presentation (20%)

Class Participation (10%)

Going into the semester, I was dreading this module a lot because it seemed like there was a lot to do & I was not confident in giving a presentation as well.  But, my views have changed hahah because I took this module with my friends which makes things easier because we already knew what each of our strengths were & our working styles too.  Tutorials started only in week 2 & due to convocation, public holidays & some lessons being converted to Zoom consultations instead, there was probably only ~8 physical tutorial sessions.  The content taught is not difficult, it is just that the amount of time spent in this module is not worth just 2 AUs in my opinion hahah. For class participation,  our tutor did not tell us how she would grade us for this, but I think attendance is definitely counted but whether participating in class discussions is counted or not, I have no idea.  If you don't want to take the risk then just participate in class whenever possible I guess 😂

For Assignment 1, you will need to read a journal article & write a 500-word critique on the introduction of the article.  You'll be given ~2wks to complete it, but it can be done in less than a day if you are focused so don't worry about it, just write according to the format your tutor taught you because your tutor will be the one marking your assignment.  Comments on assignment 1 will be given however it will not be prompt, as our class only received the comments after week 13 lol probably because our tutor was very busy.

For Assignment 2, you'll need to form a group of 4-5 members & come up with a research topic, it can be about anything but the experiment/survey has to be conducted without the use of the lab & any money involved will have to be forked out by your group, there is no funding available hahah. After the briefing on assignment 2, our group members individually came up with a few topics on our own & came together to share & see which research idea we were all interested in.  It was a really quick process as all of us were interested in the topic & we sprung right into planning the experiment.  During the consultations with our tutor, it seemed like the tutor really liked our idea & had no questions whatsoever & allowed us to do whatever we planned & we had a lot of fun 😁 After the experiment,  we had to collate our results & draw conclusions from our findings before writing a 3000-word report (again, follow the format your tutor wants).  This was the most time-consuming as the submission is during our midterms period + we had to come up with slides & prepare for the presentation (Assignment 3).  

We were given 4-5minutes each for the presentation.  For our group, we split it such that 1 person presented on the introduction & background of our research topic, 1 person presented on our methodology & 2 people presented on our results + conclusion.  It is difficult to present everything in your report in just 20mins tops, so just pick & choose the most interesting content to share will be good enough.  Another tip is also to have an audience engagement segment (our tutor did not teach this but I think you'll all have learnt/experienced that presentations that involve the audience are always more engaging right).  For our class, our tutor only required us to be present on the day of our presentation,  our group chose to present in week 12 so we need not go to class on week 13 yay ✌🏻

Anyway, have fun with this module & even if you think you won't do well, it's fine, it's just 2 AUs, probably won't affect your GPA that much! 💪🏻

ET0001 - Enterprise & Innovation | GER_CORE | 1AU | Pass

9 LAMS Videos + 3 Quizzes, 28, 28, 20 qns repesctively (100%): 100%

This is a pass/fail module that can be completed in less than a month.  As always, I would recommend that you finish it as soon as the LAMS are available so you can just forget about it hahah.  I remember encountering a few technical issues because the instructions were that the next LAMS sequence will be available when you complete the previous part.  But after completing part 1, for example, part 2 did not appear.  But don't worry because they will properly fix it soon, just check back often.  There are 3 online quizzes after 3 out of the 9 parts, I can't remember which part though.  Anyway, you'd need to score 75% or above before moving on to the next sequence.  If I'm not wrong, they should allow re-attempts.  I didn't need the re-attempts so I'm not sure if they exist, but it would make sense to allow re-attempts right 😂

Results have not been released yet, so I'll update here after I get my results!  I feel like I'll probably only be able to maintain my GPA & not pull it up lol but we shall see 🤞🏻 Side note: I need to take 4 MPEs next sem, so am hoping the course registration goes well for me 🤞🏻 pray for me lol 😂🙏🏻

Edit: Actually managed to pull up my GPA slightly yay, definitely gonna help cushion the drop next sem lol