[NUS Module Review] GE2228: Weather and Climate

(INTRODUCTION)

I truly promise that this will be the last Geography module I would ever take in my NUS life. Sometimes I wonder that with the Geography modules I'm taking, I should be going for a minor in Geography. But I have to take a module to clear my UEs and GE2228 happens to be the only module fitting for the bill (and SU-able too). So why not right? And with a whopping 170+ students taking this module, I can already foresee this module as a popular module in the years to come. But as a non-arts student, what do people like myself actually think about this module? Read more to find out!

(LECTURERS)

The lecturer for this module is Dr Srivatsan Vijayaraghavan. I would start off by saying that he is a very knowledgeable lecturer that really knows his stuff. With that said, he often content dumps pretty much every lesson and you can really feel the workload slowly breaking your back after just 20 minutes into the lesson. Furthermore, he is a nice lecturer that would reply promptly with your queries whenever you have one, unlike some Chemistry lecturers ahem.

But essentially, when I see GE2228, I would be always reminded of the faithful "bullying" incident the students did to him. Not to worry, because I would talk about it later, but I feel that this is something worth mentioning because while he may not be the best of lecturers (admittedly, I was sent to a lullaby almost every lecture due to content dumping), we have to understand that he is only doing what is best for student's learning and for the students to "bully" him in  a way, it just doesn't sit right with me. 

(EXPANSION OF TOPICS COVERED)

The topics covered include:

• Atmosphere
• Solar Radiation and Energy Balance
• Air Pressure and Global Circulation
• Global Winds
• Moisture, Clouds and Rainfalls
• Air-Sea Interactions
• Singapore and Weather Climate
• Rainfall and Urban Climates
• Climate Change, Science and its Challenges

You may think that these topics actually sound easy to you. And you are right; if you cut each topic's content by a quarter. The workload is massive and for just a 2k module, it kinda feels like a ripoff. Nonetheless, the contents would give you lots of insight as to weather issues around the world like La Nina or El Nino, the monsoons and global warming, You will also be able to learn lots of useful information like the formation of cyclones, thunderstorms, how urban areas could affect weather, movement of winds, deflections of sunlight and the ozone layer. Geez, just typing all these down is already such a mouthful of its own, and there are way more things that I've yet to mention so if you're still thinking of embarking on this module, brace yourselves for a huge content dumping. 

(PASSING THE ASSESSMENT)

The grading for the assessments in this module are as follows:

• Attendance - 10%
• Lab Assignment - 45%
• Presentation - 15%
• Quiz - 30%

So many things to do for a 2k module. You would think that there are only 1 lab and 1 quiz. But apparently, that isn't the case. There are 3 lab assignments, making up to 15% each and they are tediously long, mostly involving statistical manipulations using excel. There are also 2 quizzes, each 15% and they are relatively manageable, which makes the bell curve slightly worrying. Students are also required to get into groups or be a soloist for the presentations, which again takes some time to complete. Couple all of these with the insane content, this module is much more insane than what was expected. 

(SCHEDULE)

There will be a two hour lecture per week which would last literally 1h 50 mins - 2 hours. So if you were to have a lesson after that, good luck to you. There might also be some guest lecturers along the way, which could be informative to those who wanna learn new stuff. There will not be a tutorial per se, but there will be labs (kinda like a tutorial lol), where they will explain what you would need to do for the assignments. Not to worry, because there would only be 4 labs in total, each about 2 weeks apart. However, the lab assignments would require you to complete it before the next lab even begins, so procrastinators, time to get your stuff together ya. 

(EXPERIENCE AND FINAL GRADING)

Okay dudes, it's time to spill some tea and get some things straight in this blogpost. But before I get to the main tea, lemme just say a few words about my journey in this module.

I took this module because just like the other Geography modules that I've taken, I wanted to clear some UEs. If it goes well, I get to increase my CAP. If it doesn't, I could simply SU it, unless of course, I ended up being the last in class and getting a F. But unlike any other Geography module that I've taken before, this module is giving me more things to bite than I could ever chew. I've clearly set up myself for a fall before I even started this module. I did not even know this module would be so content packed. Given that so many people took this module, you would think that this module would be a bit more relaxed or less content packed, but nah fam. I died in week 3. 

Each lesson was close to 1 hour and 50 minutes long, filled with unending talking, videos and need I say, no breaks at all. If what Prof Sri said was actually in the notes, perhaps it won't be as taxing, but apparently, about half the things he says are not in the lecture notes and you are thus required to copy down. I was optimistic during the first few lectures, but started to doze off as the lessons progressed. One of the highlights that Prof Sri did, however, was the "10 Things" quiz at the end of each lecture. These quizzes are not graded and meant to test you on the things you've learnt in the previous lecture. This helped a lot, since the actual quiz were gonna be similar to the "10 Things". In case you didn't know by now, the quiz is an MCQ quiz. The time allocated for the quiz was so narrow that it kinda eliminates possible discussion. Nonetheless, those answers can be found in "10 Things", past quizzes or on Google. So that part was still doable.

The difficult part was the labs. Wow, I really hate the labs, simply because the assignment given was so damn tedious to do. I remembered the first lab was to interpret data with regards to the temperature and rainfall, while the second was about pressures and the third was about climate changes. I'll get to the forth lab later, because that's where all the tea is. I struggled doing the lab assignments because the lab required the use of simple excel skills with much required comparisons between the data; both graph and numeric. Each assignment took me about 4-5 days to do because after starting at the data for half an hour, my body began to shut down, as if the data was doing some hypnosis on me. Interpreting the data is the more straightforward part, but of course, it would mean that many others would obtain the same interpretation and the bell curve would spike. 

Now comes the forth lab. And this is where the tea is at so sit back and relax while I tell y'all what happened. So the forth lab was meant to be a non-graded assignment; since the total percentage of lab assignments was 45%, 3 labs would mean 15% each and thus, making the forth lab non-graded. However, the forth lab will be tested in the final quiz. This was good because the forth lab was held in week 11 and honestly, it's at this time I really wish an asteroid would hit earth so that I don't need to deal with another assignment anymore. But anyways, this lab was a math based lab and students were simply asked to prepare a piece of paper to work out some mathematical questions with the equations and values all provided. This means that no student is required to memorize any new formula. This was when some students, probably from the arts stream (and this is no discrimination and you will see why), decided to pull out the module description from NUSmods and literally highlighted to the TA/Prof Sri and demanded them to do a poll to ask students whether it is fair to have a mathematical component in the quiz when the module said "given its introductory and nonmathematical nature, this course is appropriate for students from all faculties". 

The key word here is demanded. And trust me, there were more than one that demanded the Professor to change his mind about having lab four in the quiz. Since I attended the lab session, I knew a couple of them who were visibly unhappy and kept voicing out the module description for the entire class to see. Honestly speaking, I'm no fan of mathematics but the questions in the lab were not at all difficult. They were very much doable and easy to understand; simply use values given in the question and use the equation, also given in the question. However, some students thought they couldn't handle such a thing because they didn't take mathematics in secondary school??? What?? I found this sad because Prof Sri took pains to prepare lab four and to be possibly bullied into totally scrapping the lab four part out of the quiz by some students who couldn't do a 1 + 1 is simply disgusting. It is these people who really give the term "strawberry generation" its meaning. It's sad to see NUS students, considered one of the brightest, complaining and demanding the professor take a fair route and conduct a poll, simply because they can't hack simple mathematics questions.

At the end of the day, all Prof Sri wanted was to deliver some knowledge about how Geographical events can have some mathematical idea in it. However, the learning aspect was tarnished by some students who thought they could control a nice professor who would give in to them. You should try some Chemistry lecturers and see if they would give in to your demands. Prof Sri certainly didn't deserve this and as a tutor myself, it would've pained me to conduct some interesting stuff for students only for them to turn around and spit those things you've prepared for them, on the ground. 

Okay enough with the rant. You guys reading this can go draw your own conclusions from this, but that's all I gotta say about this module. Sorry you gotta hear my rant and all. Don't worry about the presentations anyways, they are pretty easy to do. 

(CONCLUSION AND TIPS)

As a 2k module, I do not think its worth so much of the brain capacity and content overload every lesson. With that said, I would highly not recommend this module for people who are already taking content heavy modules and want a slacker module. For non-Arts students, I would discourage taking this module; wait for more interesting modules to take that are less taxing. But for the Arts students, if you love Geography then hey, take this module. But please, don't ever be another person using the module description to complain about a particular content being there. Prof Sri ftw. 

Ratings out of 5⭐:

• Should you take this module - Highly discourage this module unless you are an Arts student
• Degree of Difficulty - ⭐⭐⭐
• Effort Required - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Timetable Impact - ⭐⭐⭐

**For more queries, kindly comment down below. Thanks**