It has definitely been a long three months since the start of the semester and knowing that I had to bid for ES1102. Looking back, it can be described as a series of unfortunate events that somehow led to something fortunate as ending up in tutorial group E02.
Before even entering the university, I had heard multiple negative remarks about ES1102: it takes up too much of your time, taking it does not give you any module credits, the list goes on. I was definitely hoping that I would not have to take this module. When the results of the QET showed that I had to take ES1102, I felt that I was done for.
The first tutorial session started off awkward for me, but it become more relieving. I was late for the lesson as I have never been in the Engineering faculty before (I am (un)fortunately the only Chemistry student in this time slot) and when I entered the room, people were already conversing with one another. The really nice tutor then approached me, telling me to take a seat and then interact with the people around me. I did so, albeit awkwardly, but gradually I opened up to a few classmates. After the short introduction between peers, Ms. Anita (the tutor) then provided us with the lesson plan of this module. Upon seeing the lesson plan, I definitely heaved a sigh of relief. There were rumors of some tutors demanding assignments biweekly for reasons unknown, and there were tutors requesting only a few assignments for grading. Ms. Anita's requirements was definitely manageable, and it definitely did not contain any ridiculous biweekly assignments of any form.
The lessons conducted were definitely stress-free and the build-up to writing the essay was really smooth: We started off with grammar structures, how academic writing looks like, and then the vocabulary used in academic writing. It slowly proceeded to writing a summary of a list of articles, and techniques on how to approach summary writing were done in class. This allowed us to discuss among ourselves and to determine the salient points and how one could go about preserving the main content of the article with short and simple sentences.
The difficulty then increases after we were more proficient on summarizing: we were then tasked to write a reader response essay on an article of our choice from a provided list. With sufficient summary practice, the first part of the reader response essay was extremely manageable, but the response to the article had a few hiccups for me. During the composition of the essay, I found myself staring into blank space and wondering what I should write about. This was easily resolved by referring to similar articles about the same issue online, and inspiration came and I managed to finish the reader response essay with little problems. During peer review, Aaron gave positive reviews about my essay and I was really happy about it. After some adjustments and corrections, I submitted the second draft, which received positive feedback along with suggestions for improvement. I was really happy as that meant that there are minimal issues with my essay and I could submit it with just some fine-tuning.
After the submission of the reader response essay, Ms. Anita gradually prepared us for the academic essay writing. Even though she has reduced the difficulty in essay crafting by guiding us on how to craft topic sentences, citation and paraphrasing, I felt that it was difficult to craft the essay. I had chosen income inequality in India, which is definitely something workable, but it was an uncommon choice as most of the classmates who were doing income inequality chose to do China or Singapore which are countries that people usually receive more information about. As a result, I had to search around on the internet on how serious the issue is, and also the relevant data to support my claims. My first draft was, in my opinion, close to a disaster: I had misunderstood the essay requirements and went ahead to state current and plausible future solutions for the secondary impact instead of stating for income inequality, and I had to re-do my essay. I was definitely disappointed as I had spent a lot of time and effort in crafting the essay but it did not turn out as expected. The second draft turned out much better, but lacked focus - a problem that I always faced when writing in general. Thanks to Ms. Anita's feedback, I was able to narrow my scope and phrase my ideas to be much clearer and more direct, and the third draft was submitted smoothly.
Now that ES1102 is coming to an end, I am extremely thankful of Ms. Anita as she has definitely made the module extremely manageable and not as burdensome and horrible as many have claimed. Also, she has helped me improve on my flaws in writing, and made me able to describe my ideas clearer and better. This skill will be practised when I am writing lab reports, as one is required to describe processes and analyses succinctly. However, this all will not happen if one is unwilling to practise. With sufficient practice and the willingness to improve, one can definitely succeed and attain whatever he wants - and in this case, completing homework assignments and then rewarding yourself with an hour of TV.
Signing off,
Lyon
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