I'm glad that I managed to get an extension on my history essay.. :) Went to look for Fiona (the tutor) just now and came up with a whole load of excuses as to why I need an extension, but hey, they were really genuine excuses.. I said sth like, "I'm kind of new to South African history, and African history in general.. blah blah. My European Studies essay was due last friday, and i was doing it." I wanted to say, "and besides, my birthday was on monday.. so i was not exactly doing anything on that day etc etc", but of cos I didn't say that la. But she gladly gave me an extension till monday 5pm. I knew she would give anyway.. cos she's such a soft-spoken tutor, very easy to negotiate stuff. Anyway, Jeremy got an extension for his essay too.. so why shouldn't I? =X Basically, if u're wondering how the essay questions are distributed, it first starts off with a bibliographic exercise which constitutes 15% of the unit. The exercise requires u to choose 30 journal articles from a whole range of topics, and some are really quite absurd, e.g. the practice of female genital mutiliation in africa, or "postcards as a form of colonialism".. so out of the 40 options I had, I picked the one which looked quite recent to me, which is the "reasons for collapse and decline of apartheid in SA". Jeremy is doing "impact of UN intervention in somalia"... urm btw, this unit is supposed to be "world history - colonialism to imperalism", but since the unit coordinator, i.e. Dr Jeremy Martens aka "red pants" also teaches upper-level african history, it's no wonder that quite a fair bit of essay topics revolves around africa. And it's quite disproportionate, as in the unit weightage.. like, the bibliographic exericse, which is quite easy to do makes up 15% of the unit, and the essay proper, which is based on the bibliographic exericse, makes up 15% of the unit. and it is 2000 words. although i know i shdn't be complaining, cos i know s'pore studies requires 3000 words or sth?
Just to give u a kind of idea of where I am right now in the course, this week is Lectures 23 / 24 for all the units.. and next week will be the last two lectures and last tutes for all the units (week beginning 25/10).. after that, there'll be a one week study break, before exams officially begins on 6/11 to 20/11... i start on the 12/11, so I've got qutie a few days of extra time to study. Those who do economics, commerce, law, engineering - i.e. the supposedly more "popular" subjects among asians start their exams first...
there's another public lecture conducted by the PS dept later in the evening.. It's held at University House (is there a building with the same name in NUS as well? I think so...) and it's basically a preview of the US elections. Unless anything really interesting happens, the next post on my blog will be on monday i guess. got to get down to do my history essay.