Once again, I’m going to review the modules that I took this semester.
If you have any questions, please send it to my email atqhteo@gmail.com, or leave a comment below. Don't worry, there are no stupid questions! I've received many emails asking me all sorts of questions. I reply all of them :)
The modules covered in this post:
PL4235 - Moral Psychology
PL4880I - Social Psychology of the Unconscious
(I only took 2 modules this semester as I'm working on my Honors Thesis, which is a year long project and worth 3 modules)
To see my writeup on whether you should do an Honors Thesis,
click this link
I’ll answer 5 questions for each: What is it about? How’s the workload? How difficult is it? Any miscellaneous tips/How was the exam? Should you take it?
If you want to see previous reviews for
- PL4880F, PL4880G, GEK1063, click this link
- PC1323/GEK1510, GEM2901, PL4207, LSM1303, PL3231, click this link
- PC1325/GEK1508, MKT1003X, PL3252, PL3234, PH2211, click this link.
- GEk1519, SE1101E, PL3236, PL3233, PL3240, click this link.
- PL1101E, NM1101E, PH1102E, LAF1201, PL2131, click this link.
- For PL2132, PL3232, SSB2216 , PL3235, PH2110, click this link.
Do note that modules do vary across semesters, depending on which professor is taking it, so I will include the name of the professor for your benefit.
PL4235 - Moral Psychology
Prof: Nina Powell
[Update: Nina has left a long comment in the comments section below to address my review. My response to her comment can be found here]
What is it about?
You learn about particular theories about what drives moral judgments. Is it intuition or reasoning? Do we judge whether something is good or bad based on a gut feeling or based on logical reasoning?
How’s the workload?
One 3-h seminar style lecture a week.15% class participation, 30% for 3 essays, 15% for 2 'moral fieldwork' assignments, and 40% finals.
There are also about 120398 readings each week. Ok fine, I exaggerate. But there are way too many to be motivated to read them at all, so I began just reading abstracts after the first few weeks. It's about 5-7 each week.
UPDATE: I stopped reading readings after Week 4.
Essays are short 500 word essays.
Fieldwork was really weird, just record instances of moral vice/virtue, and another one was present your friend with a moral situation and see how they react. She didn't define the assignment till like Week 11. May change again for future sems so no point elaborating.
How difficult is it?
It's probably easier if you are good at expressing your opinions on reasoning processes and articulating why you think something is good/bad, to do well in class participation. The prof doesn't strictly track the class part because she can't remember everyone's names so not sure how exactly she grades this.
Update: Ok, apparently you just have to talk regularly so that at least she notices you. Then for class part, she gave out a piece of paper and told us to write the grade we thought we deserved. Whatever we wrote would be the grade we got - and if she finds out someone who didn't talk much and gave themselves a high grade she would give a 0 (I think no one got this).
This just demonstrates how lazy she was to even remember who said what. I bet she didn't even check it and just followed it. She can't pronounce Chinese names so gave up learning names after the first class.
The content is fairly understandable, but it's not as philosophical as you may think. Rather, it looks at WHY and HOW people make certain moral judgments, not which moral judgment is more accurate (as philosophy may do it).
The essays are weird, I've no idea what she wants even after completing two essays and receiving feedback. Her feedback makes no sense sometimes and seems slipshod. Don't bother staying back for the 'feedback sessions she gives after she returns your essays, she gives generic writing comments which don't help at all as it's not specific to what you wrote.
Miscellaneous Tips / Exam
The best tip I can give you is to not take this module.
Should you take it?
No. Unless a better professor takes it. Nina seems unprepared, unmotivated, and is not a good educator. She has very low EQ. For instance, there was one class where she said something like : " All of you wrote bad essays. They were ALL terrible, with bad writing, shallow arguments, and lacked depth, and were all terrible".
Way to motivate students! Woohoo!
She doesn't do much besides read off her slides, and when even so her slides aren't structured well such that sometimes she describes an entire experiment which only had a one line description in the slide, and you are frantically scribbling down the main points of the study.
She doesn't seem to prepare well for each lecture, sometimes she is reading off her slide and hits a point which she didn't know how to explain, and, I quote her: "ok nevermind skip that." ???
She did this multiple times. in one lecture.
She doesn't upload slides on time half the time, so often I was left with no lecture slides for lecture and had to copy notes on a blank piece of paper. This is after me personally emailing her to remind her to upload before class (because she promised she would, just that she sometimes forgot).
As mentioned, her comments for our essays made little sense, and the advice she gave was generic and not tailored to our individual essays. It feels like she has a list of 'Random bad feedback to give essays', and she rolls a dice to pick a random one and inserts it into our essays. Sometimes her comments directly contradict each other (e.g. Your intro was well written and concise. -one sentence later - need to elaborate more in your intro)
Her 'writing tips' were just strange writing stylistic matters she insisted we follow. Some examples:
- Don't start a sentence with 'However,', no matter what. 'It undermines your argument'. (?? That IS the point gosh.)
- Don't use flowery language, such as 'upon' (I swear, she said this). Use 'on' instead.
- Each paragraph must have at least 3 sentences
I haven't even begun to talk about how unstructured her entire module felt, how poorly defined the assignments were, how sloppily the syllabus was dealt with. These points can be mitigated by the fact that it's her first time I guess. But it's her poor attitude and inability to teach and weird writing idiosyncracies that were unpardonable and I had to list above.
All in all a bad experience and I was extremely unmotivated to even try to do well in this module. Worst psych module ever.
Predicted Grade : B-
Actual Grade: B
PL4880I - Social Psychology of the Unconscious
Prof: Dr Jia Lile
What is it about?
You will learn about how our unconscious may influence our preferences, perceptions, decision making, etc.
How’s the workload?
About 1-2 readings a week (quite light for a level 4000), which you don't really need to read because Dr Jia goes through the readings as part of his lecture. Two tests, one final 15 page writeup on a research idea (intro + method + predicted results + discussion). Class part worth 10% which can be obtained by participating in forum or speaking in class.
Something I found strange was that the second test was on Week 9 - this means everything after Week 9 was not tested. You can think about what that means heh.
How difficult is it?
I may be biased because I've always liked social psychology, but I found the subject matter fairly straightforward and easy to understand. Dr Jia also structures his lectures well and explains concepts quite thoroughly and slowly with multiple studies, so it's not too difficult.
Any miscellaneous tips/How was the exam?
If you can understand the lectures, there really is no need to read the readings. I didn't read any readings past week 2 when I realized he covered everything in the readings in lecture. Just understand the main points of each study presented (Dr Jia summarizes them at the end of each lecture) and be able to think critically about them, you shouldn't have much problems with the tests
Should you take it?
Yes. Dr Jia is a great person who is very friendly and nice, replies emails very quickly too. He structures his lectures simply and clearly, and the assessment is rather forgiving ... except for the final paper perhaps, which some may struggle with (you are supposed to come up with an original research idea for the writeup. It's kinda like doing a thesis but without actually running any experiments haha)
Predicted Grade: B+/A-
Actual Grade: A
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End of review post
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Just a special note here to say that with the successful completion of this semester (I got an A- for my thesis), I have officially graduated! This brings mixed emotions for so many reasons, and one of the reasons why I'm sad is that I can't do reviews anymore :(
I've enjoyed writing reviews for these past 4 years, and I'll miss writing them. To those who have been following my reviews (or even my blog), a big THANK YOU! I derive great satisfaction in knowing I have helped juniors in making more informed choices.
I have also received many emails along the years asking me about NUS-related matters, and I've answered them all! So feel free to continue to email me (atqhteo@gmail.com) if you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer.
With that, goodbye and happy schooling! (while I'm off to miserable work-life)
