ES1001 E2S2: ENVIRONMENT & SOCIETY (4.0 AU)

Year Taken: AY19/20, Sem 1
Grade: A

Big classroom, Ang moh teacher, big words (trust me you’ll love the word resilience). Before you even have a chance to settle down into uni life, you’re now looking at the intricacies between the society and the environment. This course is taught by Dr. Natasha Bhatia, Lecturer and Undergraduate Programme Coordinator in ASE. A marine ecologist and ecological economist, Dr Natasha’s experience and anecdotes made this course really interesting. Besides, she will be more than happy to guide you along undergrad life if you approach her with any questions.

ES1001 is somewhat a primer for any of you kids looking to enter the society specialisation in EESS. Nonetheless, it gives you a global outlook on the environmental issues earth is facing today as well as equip you with the necessary research skills needed throughout the course.We even had a mini field-trip to attend the national geographic explorer spotlight 2019 at the Singapore art-science museum.

Quizzes (15%) | Slightly below average because the bell-curve is too damn steep
We had quizzes to complete throughout this course, each assessing the topics taught 1-2 weeks before. It’s a small percentage of the total score but don’t be fooled because the cohort median is literally 1-2 marks away from the total. So listen to lectures, take down notes and don’t be complacent for this segment.

Research Paper 1 : Resilience (20%) | Shadow Grade : A
For your first paper, you will have to analyze and write a 1500-2000 word research paper about the concept of resilience, the capacity of an ecosystem to respond and recover from an external disturbance. For most of you, this will probably be the first time you write an actual formal research paper that consists of an actual structure and bibliography. So… be prepared for hundreds of open tabs, readings and sleepless nights. If you’re like me and more accustomed to JC’s traditional pen and paper style, good luck to you because you’re gonna spend most of your time typing your essays in uni.
Being an avid diver, I chose to write about the Resilience of Reef Ecosystems in response to declining Reef Shark populations , which was pretty interesting for me. Looking at the feedback, my advice is to focus on the coherence of your paper especially when it comes to the presentation and structure of the essay. Fret not tho, we had a peer evaluation before the submission, so take note of the feedback from your friends and TAs.

Research paper 2: Dealer’s choice (25%) | Never knew the grades…
Now that you’ve experience writing a research paper, you’re free to choose any topics that was mentioned in class or something that interests you. Initially I wrote about how space exploration could help solve modern environmental problems which ironically was too “out of the world” so I ended up writing about Remote Sensing for Climate Change Monitoring, which was pretty mundane despite how it’s technically still space-related. I had to juggle this with finals and the presentation so I think I wrote a pretty average and technical piece.

Presentation (20%) | I had fun so grades didn’t matter
Here’s the fun part (depending on who you work with… just joking, we are all great people)! You have to pair up (by drawing lots) and prepare a presentation on any topics that the both of you have written on. My team (yo Blyss!), decided to talk about the Effects of tourism on Coral Reefs and had a fun time making props and slides. Basically, the whole cohort will spend 2 days/ lecture slots watching every teams presentation, and the presentation will be graded by Prof Natasha and the TAs. I guess everyone went crazy with the props and we had some pretty bizarre presentations, which was the perfect closure to this course.

I think class participation accounts for the rest of the grades so… you know what to do.

This review was reposted with the kind permission of Roy. Originally published at https://djtangent.wordpress.com/2020/05/13/testing/