Another year another NUS controversy

NUS CS y1s2

I meant to make this way earlier but it’s the start of y2s1 now but better late than never I guess.Overall thoughts are actually pretty good! This felt way better than sem 1, and I mostly think it’s due to lesser math and more programming-related stuff. Stuff I feel more comfortable with.

You’ll also notice that this post is way shorter than my sem 1 one, and that’s probably because I did the semester 1 post when it was all fresh in my head. oops.

CS2030S Programming Methodology II

So this is the first Programming Methodology module I took, since I was exempted from the first one. I actually found this module quite fun and relaxed. But that’s probably because I’ve had experience in Java and am pretty comfortable with it.

The final exam had a question that I fumbled because I forgot the truth table for XOR but it is what it is. Quite happy with the grade I got anyway!

In the previous reflection I had a “What I would have done differently” section, but I don’t think it’s needed for this module at least.

CS2040S Data Structures and Algorithms

Another fun module! I loved doing the assignments that they gave. I enjoy doing algorithms questions on my own time because I think it’s like a fun puzzle, but it’s not so fun in examination scenarios :(

Either way, learned a decent bit from this. Also prof eldon is by far the best lecturer I’ve encountered so far. His enthusiasm is infectious.

ES2660 Communicating in the Information Age

A module about communicating as a professional in IT. Enjoyed the sessions despite them being 3 hours - generally the ES modules I’ve taken are quite chill and enjoyable. The environment is not boring as the prof encourages discussions and viewpoints from everyone. I do think some of the concepts thought are a little on the quack side - I don’t see when I’ll be using them (ahem some of the critical thinking frameworks. Just use your brain \s)

I’m pretty alright on presentations too, so the projects were fun to do - only thing might be the video you have to film which is a little tight in terms of the deadline.

Met some pretty good teammates on this module too.

HSA1000 Asian Interconnections

I tried on this one, I did. At the start, I followed along. I did the assignment. My first assignment got a really good grade too, 90/100. I thought I could do it.

I do believe that a holistic education is important and necessary, but I COULD NOT MAKE IT THROUGH THIS ALL THE WAY. I found the topics discussed to be boring, surface level, unnecessary, and even pretentious all at the same time (Who am I to critique, though. I can only write what I feel). I did not dedicate much time to this module, and it shows. By the end, I was quite intent on doing what I can and then using a S/U for the module if I had to

HSH1000 The Human Condition

In terms of the non-CS related courses, I really enjoyed this one. In contrast to HSA1000. I enjoyed the structure of the course. The reading material was good too - it made me read some texts I would have probably never read on my own time. Overall entertaining, especially if you like reading! From my experience, most people seemed to not have read the text and instead watched the videos covering the texts. While you can do that, I still think that reading the texts would give you an overall advantage, so I do recommend that if you’re going into this that you prepared to (and look forward to!) read. The texts are not particularly long, aside from 1 or 2 of them.

To be honest, I did not deliver the highest quality work for the final project since my attention was directed towards other modules at that time period, but I still did get a good grade.

ST2334 Probability and Statistics

The only math module I took this semester. First half was pretty good and gave me confidence. But the final exam was pretty hard. This seems to be on par for math modules, though. Not much to say other than it’s Stats. Professor was good.

Reflecting on the things I said I’d do in semester 2 in semester 1

This is me addressing the things I said I’d do in semester 2 in the semester 1 blog post. As the header says.

Timetable

To improve my time management, I said that I would create a timetable. I did create one, and it fell apart pretty fast. I’ve found that my brain doesn’t respond well to the inflexibility that the time table creates - I was not able to sustain it for very long. I instead fell back to just using vibes to choose when to study or chill or etc. And to be fair it worked.

But now, I’ve thought about another way to ensure that I stay on track with my goals. I got this idea from envelope-style budgeting, a thing I’ve started to do to manage my money. The oversimplified TLDR version is that you assign budgets to each category of expenditure that you have, and just track if you hit your budgets or not.

So I’m taking that idea and applying that to time instead. I would have the categories study time, entertainment, school, and maybe a catch-all “missing time” category to account for travel and such. The easy part about this is setting the “budgets” - the hard part is tracking the time. I’ve had some ideas to make this process easier, but I’ll see how it goes.

Reinforcing learning

I mentioned in my previous s1 blog post about revisitng early topics to reinforce my learning. By laying that out in the post, I think I became more intentional about it, and I did actually do it. I definitely think it helped.

Anyway that’s it. See ya.