Sem 6, Revision Week: Revision?

OK, in a few hours time, I will be taking my third paper, but let me get this post out so that everything is up-to-date.

With all the lessons done in week 13, what followed was the revision week. However, I didn't do much revision for that week, as I try to get back to normal work - as normal as possible.

In the previous semester, I would had taken leave from revision week onwards (or a week before the first paper) to start my revision. However, what I found was that this arrangement was not effective. I found myself spending most of the time lazing around, doing everything except revision. It's just a waste of of my leave, and left me doing a lot of catch up at work. So, in the previous semester, I decided to only take leave on the week(s) of the exams itself. Such an arrangement turned out well last semester, so I decided to do it again this semester.

So, there I was, back at work during revision week, and only doing the revision in the evening. The progress wasn't as good as expected, but I have the whole of next week (which I would be taking leave since it's the week of my exam) to do my revision, so I wasn't that worried.

That's all for revision week actually, as far as I can remember. Now, I will get back to my revision and post about my exam next time.

Sem 6, Week 13: The Defense

I am in the midst of revising for my third (and final) paper of my exams, which will be held tomorrow. However, if I don't get this post down, I will not be in time to get all the MSc post up to date. So here goes...

Week 13 was the final week of the semester, which is also the final week of my MSc. The main event of course was my thesis defense, which was on Thursday (10 Nov). Before that could happened, there was a minor scare. Initially I was told I only needed one examiner for the defense, and as such I invited only one lecturer to be my examiner. Then, just a couple of days before the defense, I was told again that I needed two. That put me in an embarrassing situation, cos my boss ZB all along insisted that I should get my co-sup to attend, whom can double as my examiner. I found ZB's insistence quite a bother, as it put me in a difficult situation, and it took me quite some effort to make him agreed to only invite one examiner. So upon hearing that I needed two examiner, I braced myself and told ZB about it. Bracing myself was indeed necessary, though ZB was quite cool about it, his smirk comment was enough to let me know how he felt about "my" mistake.

In such a short notice I definitely could not get another lecturer to be my examiner. Luckily, my unit head PS agree to stand in as my examiner. In retrospect, that was kinda a good move, cos I got to introduce my examiner to PS and ZB, and got some conversation going between them, so hopefully that might open up some opportunity in the future.

As for the defense itself, knocking together the slides was easier then thought. I did a rehearsal in front of my fellow colleagues and got very good review, though the presentation was too short and there were some refinement needed. Once those refinement was made, the actual presentation went smoothly and was better than I thought (the whole of the actual day was spent on practicing the presentation). I thought I stumbled a bit on the questions and answers, but overall I think I left the examiner impressed. ZB told me that I should be getting a distinction. I do hope so...

So with the main event for the sem - and perhaps the whole MSc course - coming to a close, it was like a big load of my shoulders. The last piece of business for the week was to attend the lecture of Advanced Organic Materials, as it was my turn to ask question during the presentation. After that as done, the instructional period for this semester finally come to an end for me. The final act will be the exams, which I will post next time.

Book List - October

(Yup, it's almost the end of November, but I like to keep things in chronological order; therefore, updated till week 13 for MSc - which the end of October fell on - before coming up with this list)

I am drawing up a DVD list. Till the end of the year, at the end of every month, I shall add a title to the list. Then from the start of next year, I will read one title a month....

Jan 2011 - Did You Spot the Gorilla? (Richard Wiseman)
Feb 2011 -Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character) (Richard P. Feynman)
Mar 2011 - SuperFreakonomics (Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner)
April 2011 - 13 Things That Do Not Make Sense (Michael Brooks)
May 2011 - A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway)
June 2011 - Quirkology (Richard Wiseman)
July 2011 - The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies---How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths (Michael Shermer)
August 2011 - Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology (Kenneth Feder)
September 2011 - 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute (Richard Wiseman)
October 2011 - The Quest for the Cure: The Science and Stories Behind the Next Generation of Medicines (Brent R. Stockwell)

DVD List - October

(Yup, it's almost the end of November, but I like to keep things in chronological order; therefore, updated till week 13 for MSc - which the end of October fell on - before coming up with this list)

I am drawing up a DVD list. Till the end of the year, at the end of every month, I shall add a title to the list. Then from the start of next year, I will watch one title a month....

Jan 2011 - Sense and Sensibility
Feb 2011 - 300 Days of Summer
Mar 2011 - Sweeny Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
April 2011 - The Men Who Stare at Goats
May 2011 - The Rocky Horror Picture Show
June 2011- Tootsie
July 2011 - Grease
August 2011 - The Godfather
September 2011 - Frankie and Johnny
October 2011 - A Fish Called Wanda

Sem 6, Week 12: All The Fuss...

Having completed the second paper, my exams are nearing the end. So let me take a bit of time off my revision to give a recap on week 12.

The Monday of week 12 (31st of October) was the deadline for the submission of my Thesis. I was all ready to make the trip down to NUS when I received an email from the Unit Head, wanting to give some suggestions about my Thesis. I was all ready to submit, but then how could I decline suggestion from my Unit Head? So down I went to the Unit Head's office, expecting to spend another whole day working on correcting my Thesis. Luckily, it was just some minor adjustment, and after those are made, I was able to head down NUS as planned, and submitted my Thesis as planned.

Submitting the Thesis marked the end of an important task, but it's also the beginning of another. Turned out, my co-sup was unwilling to nominate examiners for my thesis defense (he had his reasons, I understand...), and he was too busy to attend the defense itself too. Therefore, I had to make all the arrangement myself - with the department office, my boss ZB and my examiner (whom was selected by ZB and whom I liaised with by myself). The whole arrangement for defense was an episode by itself - partly due to the requirement by ZB - and by the end of everything, I am quite sure the whole department office knew who I am because of my constant communication with the course manager (and a couple of other admin staff for other admin matter).

Anyway, while all these were going on, there was issue of the presentation for Advanced Optical Spectroscopy and Imaging running in the background. Initially, I set a timeline of completing the draft slides by the previous weekend (week 11) with my partner. However, I failed to keep to that timeline. Luckily for me, the partner was busy too. Nonetheless, I was able to knock together the slides by mid-week, which only left me with one day to prepare for the presentation. Usually, I would take a week to prepare for my presentation, but this was not the case for this semester: 2 days of preparation for the presentation of Advanced Organic Materials and only one day for this presentation for Advanced Optical Spectroscopy and Imaging. I was still going through my slides and references minutes before it was or turn to present. Fortunately, everything went as well as it can get, and I was somewhat amazed I was able to get away with it.

The presentation marked the end of lesson for Advanced Optical Spectroscopy (for me), and was the last bit of notable action for week 12. The following week, week 13, was marked by the thesis defense, which I shall update before my exams end.

Sem 6, Week 11: All About The Thesis

As I am writing this post, I have just completed the paper of the exams. I wished to bring my post up-to-date before the end of the exams, but there's still revision to be done. So here goes...

Week 11 was all about the Thesis. There were rewrites, modifications and changes. In the end, it took until the fifth draft before the Thesis was finalized.

After reviewing draft 1, my boss ZB pointed out several changes to make (rephrasing, changing chemical structure format, etc) and it took the whole day at the desk (during work) to get draft 2 done. Still unsatisfied with draft 2, ZB pointed out more suggestion to the Thesis. These changes, along with some admin work, kept me at my desk for another day. Nonetheless, draft 3 was completed and I thought it will do the job. By this point in time, I really wanted to go back to my lab work (there were some reactions that I really wanted to get going). However, within half an hour of stepping into the lab after being stuck at the desk for so long, I was being called back out again by ZB to make further changes to the Thesis, which if I didn't remember wrongly, involved some agony over how a table was presented. To modify the table according to ZB's suggestion involved re-numbering the all the chemical structures, something which I was reluctant to do. I really wanted to keep the Thesis as just that and go back to work in the lab, but I also want to have as perfect a Thesis as possible, so I got back to the desk and work on my Thesis again ("writing a Thesis is a draggy process", remarkedZB in Mandarin). Draft 4 was done relatively quickly, but still there were some small details to improve on. By then, I really wanted to get the whole Thesis over and done with, so I just make the changes without re-checking, and sent it to ZB to vet. That didn't do down well with him, and I was told off. So in the end, I sat down in front of my desk again, and spent the time to get draft 5 out, which with a little bit of help from the looming deadline, was the final draft. ,P> So in the end for the whole of week 11, I spent the whole week in front of the desk (again) and finally completed my Thesis, but did little bit else. That theme of doing little bit else actually continued into the following week, which I will elaborate next time.

Sem 6, Week 10: High Anxiety...

Another long overdue post. But still I wanted to get it down for the sake of completeness.

The problem about writing things that happened weeks ago was that I couldn't remember all the details about what happened, so I guess this would be a very short post.

Week 10 was all about one thing: writing the thesis. Initially I thought the first draft would be completed the week before over the weekend. However, that didn't happen. So for the whole of the week at work, I just sat in front of my desk, typing away to get the thesis done. It wasn't easy. Initially, I thought I could get it done by Tuesday or so. However, it took longer and the first draft was only late on Thursday night, where I labored at my desk till around 10pm. By the time I was done, I was drained.

Of course, needless to say, I didn't attend any lectures, except for Advanced Optical Spectroscopy and Imaging, where there was a test. I was late for the test (because I was editing my thesis, if I didn't recall wrongly), which turned out to be a disaster (I guess that's 20% overall gone). I also got to finally meet my presentation partner, whose appearance and behavior reinforced the "ghost partner" impression I had of him - he was pale, thin and had wavy long hair halfway down his back. He was also very quiet, unresponsive and was not engaged in the discussion at all.

Looking back, it wasn't an enjoyable week at all. The following week wasn't any better either and that I would write about next time.

Sem 6, Week 9: What Happened...

Yes, this is a long overdue post. I am supposed to write this post 3 weeks ago. So things are a bit fuzzy and I am struggling to recall what really happened on week 9.

One thing I remember quite clearly is that I completed my assignment for Advanced Optical Spectroscopy and Imaging on time - I mean, literally on time. I spent the whole of Thursday night and the whole of Friday at work just to complete the assignment. By the time I was done, it was already 5.30pm, just in time for me to make my way to the lecture to submit the assignment. Coincidentally, It was also the first time I was attending the lecture for Advanced Optical Spectroscopy and Imaging. Was supposed to meet my presentation partner too. However, I was unable to reach him by phone.

It was about this time that I seriously wondered whether my presentation partner was a ghost: he admitted that it was unreliable to reach him by phone. We had been keep in contact through email and - except for one occasion - he always replied in the early morning hours. I was the one who was always taking the lead to keep things going, while he seemed disinterested. We had arranged to meet during the lecture and yet he didn't 'appear'. I was fine if he was just a ghost; I hoped he was not a sleeping partner as well.

As for the two other modules, I decided to stop attending the lectures. I was done with the presentations for both modules, and except for Advanced Organic Material, where I was required to attend the lecture in the final week to ask question during the presentation, I did not see the need to attend any more lectures. Anyway it's time to focus on Advanced Optical Spectroscopy and Imaging, which there was a test coming up in the following week.

As for the Thesis, I originally planned to get it going over the weekend. However, very little was done, especially on Sunday, after the Real Run, which I did the half marathon. The end result of this was that the following week was really stressful, which I would talk about it in my next post.