Hey There!
Hope everyone has had a great week so far. It has been a month since I have last blogged (opps). Here’s a shot of the landscape just next to my accommodation. Spring is indeed amazing, we have been blessed with temperatures of around 18 – 22 degrees. (Btw, this is considered pretty warm!) I know that Singaporeans back home would be scratching their heads at this comment. But honestly, being acclimatised to the cooler weather, anything above 18 degrees is pretty warm! HAHA
It is currently the exam season and I am in the midst of mugging hard. Currently, I am in my second semester of my first year and I have a total of 4 exams to sit for. The thing about a degree in Accounting and Finance is that we usually have a major exam for each module that we take, hence having 4 final exams each semester :/ But it is not as bad as that sounds.
Just so you have an idea of how my exams are like, the modules and the exams I have for this semester are:
- Marketing Principles (24 May),
- Business Law & Ethics (28 May),
- Management Accounting 1 (8 June), and
- Business Economics (14 June)
As of today, I am 2 out of 4 exams! Feeling pretty good about the exams so far, which is always a good sign HAHA! Thankfully, they are quite spaced out and I have an exam a week. Giving me plenty of time for revision for each paper!
Anyways, since this year is coming to a close, I thought I might share a little of my weekly schedule as a first year Accounting and Finance student! This was definitely something I really wanted to know before coming here! So without further ado, this is an example of my weekly schedule of my second semester here!
Monday
9 am – 10 am : Business Economics Lecture
1 pm – 3 pm : Marketing Principles Lecture
I would usually roll out of bed at 7.45 am, wash up and have a breakfast before setting off from Manor Park at 8.30 am (usually with a coffee in hand). After my first lecture, I would head back to my room and review what I have gone through in my lecture (I try to do this after each lecture) and have some lunch before heading back into campus for my second lecture. Marketing Principles Lectures are quite interesting as we would have guest speakers from various different companies like P&G to give some insight from the current working world. This usually brings a different angle to our learning and another perspective into how the concepts we learn in our lectures and classes relate to the working environment. After the lecture, I head back to do some revision and chill out.
Tuesday
11 am – 1 pm : Business Law & Ethics Lecture
2 pm – 4 pm : Management Accounting 1 Tutorial
On Tuesdays, I have a slightly later start at 11 which is nice. I can afford to sleep in a little more hehe… At first, I was a little taken aback to see a 3 hour block for Business Law & Ethics, but don’t worry, it usually ends at around noon. After that lecture, my head would usually be brimming with content HAHA. So I would stumble out of that lecture hall, trying not to spill any content out of my head! JUST JOKING! I would head to Hillside with my course mates for lunch before my tutorial. At my Management Accounting tutorials, we will get a lecture about the topic first before we are given questions that we will have to work through. In a small class of around 20 students, we get to really consult the tutor whenever we get stuck along the way and really get a good understanding of the accounting concepts. I really enjoy these sessions as I will always end the class with a good understanding of the concept before I leave. At 4 pm, I would head back to my room and have a good wind down.
Wednesday
NO CLASSES!
Wednesday afternoons are reserved for sports at this University. Fortunately, I am lucky enough to not have any classes on Wednesdays, so I have the whole day to myself! My usual Wednesday routine will be to get up early and head over to the Surrey Sports Park to have a gym session. On some Wednesdays, after the gym, I will either do some revision or prepare for the classes in the next two days. Other times, I will head into town with some friends to have a nice coffee at the cafe or just a meal. Wednesdays are kept quite chill and it is a nice mid-week breather.
Thursday
10 am – 11 am : Marketing Principles Seminar
Thursdays are pretty chill as well with only an hour of classes. This seminar is used to go more in-depth into the concepts taught in the lectures as well as to have consultations about our group assignment. This is to ensure that we are on the right track for our assignment. After the seminar, I would usually grab a quite coffee from the Lakeside Cafe, which is a cafe run by Hospitality students in the Business School, and head to the library or Hillside to have a group discussion about our assignment. When I get back to my room, I like to wind down with some Netflix. I, too, fall prey to the clutches of Netflix binging.
Friday
9 am – 11 am : Business Economics Tutorial
11 am – 1 pm : Management Accounting 1 Workshop
For Fridays, it is another early start! My Economics tutorials are conducted, similarly to our Management Accounting classes, to have a recap of the lecture materials and additional questions are given for us to work through. After this class, I head over to my Accounting workshop. Out of all my classes, I enjoy this workshop the most! The workshop is just mainly an extra consultation, on top of the ones we have in tutorials, additional questions are provided for us to work through. While attempting the questions, we usually have a nice chat with our tutor about anything under the sun. This is really refreshing from our usual interactions with the teaching staff in Singapore! Learning is much more informal and personal between students and teaching staff. This makes approaching lecturers or tutors a lot easier and less daunting. I do confess that I was always a little afraid to approach tutors back in my polytechnic days, which I don’t know why HAHA! For lunch, I usually meet up with my fellow Singaporeans to have a little lunch on campus before heading back.
So that is a little overview of how my weeks are like! You can see that there aren’t a lot of contact hours for my course. Quite a fair bit of it is individual study that you usually do at your own time after classes. So I hope this grants a good idea of how my usual student life is like here!! I still can’t get over how fast the past 8 months has flown by and that I will be flying home in 2 weeks! With that, I should get back to my revision for my remaining two papers!
Until the next!
Nicholas
