This is my summarization of this talk. Hope it'll be a bit useful for those who didn't attend the talk yesterday.
Today I attended the "Year 2 Preparation Talk", 4.30pm to 6pm.
This time I didn't made the wrong choice. At exactly 4.30pm, the talk commence. It's actually not a talk bah, it's like an interaction between seniors and the juniors. Quite disappointed because they requested everybody to close their laptops.
I want to dedicate this post to all my friends in RP! Hope it's useful.
[How to take notes and points leh?]
Next time I shall bring Pen and Papers.
Let's get straight to the point! This talk covers Creative Engagement(CE), Professional Profiling(PP), Electives Modules, and Final Year Projects(FYP).
Creative Engagement
Give you opportunities to earn Creative Engagement Point(CE points).
Criteria to graduate from RP:
30 Active Points(DA & NDA)*
10 Diploma Related Points(DA & DP)*
40 Total Points(DA + DP + NDA + NDP)*
DA - Diploma related Active Points
NDA - Non Diploma related Active Points
DP - Diploma related Passive Points
NDP - Non Diploma related Passive Points
Active Points? What are they?
There are two types of Active Points - Diploma related and Non diploma related. They will be awarded to you when you did something after the talk/seminar eg. Reflection Journal(RJ)/so called Essays. You can also earn Active points by participating in an excursion/some events.
Passive Points? What are they?
There are two types of Passive Points - Diploma related and Non diploma related. They will be awarded for when you attended a talk/seminar. To simplify everything, it's something like Attendance Point. When you attend the talk, you'll be given Passive points for listening to the talk.
Our seniors strongly encourage, recommend and emphasize Year 1 students to complete the CE Module by Year 1. Because when we move to Year 2 or 3, our schedule will be packed and we'll less time to attend those talks. All the time we have will be focusing on our PP and/or FYP.
We also discussed about the time needed to completed the 40 points that we needed. The normal rate is 1.5 semester. I find it very true, because I also completed mine at this rate.
In my humble opinion, I feel that attending these talk and participating excursion/outing is very useful. I got to learn things from many field example:
Psychology
Medical
Engineering
Bioengineering
Food and Beverage
Tourism and Hospitality
IT
Business
Politic
Environment
Forensic Science
Pharmaceutical
Biotechnology
Zoology
Botany
Sports Science
And many other more too much to named it. =)
Each and every talk/excursion is always very different, I always get to learn something new. I enjoy learning new things, and exposing myself to new areas of knowledge. Something what I called Life-long Learning.
Professional Profiling
Every student have to complete their Professional Profiling.
According to our dear seniors, it's 3 three stage module - Proposing, Reporting, Presenting.
Proposing
Students at Year 2 will get to know who is their Adviser(s) and Supervisor(s). At the proposing stage, you must contact your Advisers or Supervisors to propose on a topic to profile. It's something like doing a detailed case study of a company, it might be a bit different for Art students.
Once you have a topic to profile, you have to submit to your Adviser or Supervisory. If he/she say OK, they will help you submit the proposal into the RP PP System. There you go, your proposal's approved.
Reporting
After your proposal had been approved by your Adviser and Supervisor, you have to start doing lots of research on the topic that you are going to report. Basically it's a 2000 word minimum report to write. It's must include your Analysis of the particular case study that you're doing. What they are looking for is the Analytical skills.
Planning of what you're going to write in the 2000 word is very important. Usually it takes about a few days to a few weeks. After you've planned everything, you can start to write report!
Once you're done with your report, you can submit to your Adviser/Supervisor. They will see if it meet the requirement, and whether do you need to rewrite your report. If you have a spelling mistake, they'll not accept your report and have you edit the report till it's correct.
There are cases where a student need to re-submit the report up to 10 times in order for the report to be accepted. Also, you must give credit for where the source is taken. Plagiarism is an very serious offense that RP taking Seriously!
(Repeat after me, I must not plagiarize.. I must not plagiarize.. I must not plagiarize.)
No, not over yet! You still have to create posters for your presentation! Usually the posters are the most difficult to make, because it's super time consuming. Please refer to the PP website for more info about the poster.
Presentation
After your report had been accept by the school, next is to wait for the presenting time slot. Most student get their time slot during the holiday.
In front of is a few judges that will ask you questions about your poster. You only have a few minutes to present your work. Do your best! All the one year hard work is based on these few crucial minutes of your presentation!
By the way, you can't 5hit through the whole presentation. The judges won't give you face, everything they ask are very determined to get an answer from you. If you didn't do enough research on your topic, they might give you a FAILED and ask you to do it next AGAIN in Year 3!
Level of Difficulties
The level of difficulty changes every year! Our current of Year 3 batch, in my opinion, done it with the least difficulty. They are allowed to interview one person, and just hand in a report about the person.
Now, the difficulty has increased! You can't Interview people already. Now is all about analytical skills. Analyze, analyze and analyze the case study.
For different school, they have different ways of presenting too! Some times, an Engineering student will just need to present to 3 judges at one go. But for Sciences Student, you'll have to present to 3 different judges at different time! -.-"~ (Die le! Hope I won't kena this.)
Elective Modules
Elective modules are those modules which you can choose from within your School (eg. School of Applied Science).
So the question is, Will I be able to take the elective modules which I want to read? Depends. If for a particular module is popular, they'll prioritize and let the better student get it. So your GPA actually, in one or another way, affects whether if you're able to get the elective module which you want.
Are you going to do your elective modules in Year 2? or Leave it till Year 3?
At higher Year (Year 2 and 3), RP students are entitled to 4 day study week! Cheers, but not too soon! The one day 'off' is actually for you to do your PP and FYP! By default, the free day is on Wed. But things can change.
Students who can take stress or with better time management are actually advice to take Electives during their free day. Meaning while other students are enjoying a 4-day study week, you'll have to come back to school for 5-day a week.
My opinion: If you can, take electives module on Year 2. Why? This will greatly reduce your work load in Year 3, and gives you more time for your Final Year Projects. =)
Joke Time
By one of the senior. If you're having 5-day study week, and your friend is having 4. He/she calls you on their free day and say "hahaz I am still on my bed, while you're in school" Lol! So mean sia.
But when year 3 comes, most likely you'll have two free day in a week. Payback time, call them during that two days and say the same thing "hahaz I am still on my bed, while you're in school"
Freely Chosen Module
It's the module which you can choose from All schools in RP. Say a Sport Science student wants to take IT modules, yup, through Free Chosen Module, he might be able to get it.
Same case for Freely Chosen Module. Your GPA will determined if you're able to get the modules with you want. Are you going to do your elective modules in Year 2? or Leave it till Year 3?
Final Year Projects
They didn't talk much about it. But it's OK. I'll share with you'all what Mayi jie(Senior taking IT course) told us Junior. --> from one of the threads.
The school will assign a team for you. If you're lucky, you'll have good team mates. If you're not,
then good luck. But for most case, its no luck.
Just like one of my close friend, doing her slides all alone and the team members doing other work. The work ratio is just not really fair, this is how I feel for her.
Back to the FYP thingy. For Mayi jie's batch(Year 3), students can choose to do individual projects after proposing. For now, she's unsure about the system. HmM~