It's been a hell of a Semester, and although it's already Week 10, it feels as if the Semester hasn't even started.

I've been complaining about how NUS has been handling this situation for the longest time, and my boyfriend urged me to write about it in hopes that the school may pay attention to these issues. I know it's a long shot, so I'm just gonna write my thoughts to get the frustration off my chest.

1. WHY WERE OUR MID-TERMS NOT CANCELLED???

Just to have some context, while lectures started in Week 1, most tutorials only start in Week 3 and 4 for FASS students. However, COVID-19 struck some time in Week 4/5, and for some of our modules, we never even got to meet the tutors face to face because lessons got shifted online. With lessons being conducted so differently, it would be reasonable to think that NUS would cancel mid-terms (which was coming in 2-3 weeks), or that FASS would switch the exams to take-home assignments. I mean, we didn't even learn anything goddamnit.

I'm taking a very, very tough statistics module this Semester, and even if the lessons were to be conducted normally, I would already be struggling. Stats also requires a lot of practice, and while our lectures go on as usual on Zoom, our tutorials are cancelled. Every week, we are just given worksheets to do in replacement of physical tutorials, and the answers are uploaded end of the week. For someone like me who is already struggling to cope, doing the worksheets by myself is like writing an essay in Greek. I honestly don't know what the fuck I'm doing.

But mid-terms resumed as usual, and most profs made mid-terms online. For many of my modules, the exam format was supposed to be MCQ, but was changed to short answer questions and an open book format. This upsetted me and some other students because the bellcurve was going to be so wrecked; now that the mid-terms could be done at home online, most students would come together to do the exam together, and obviously, the smarter students would stick together. This gave them an unfair advantage.

This leads me to the NUS cheating scandal that recently came on the news. I'm not justifying the actions of the students who did it, but I can understand why they did it. First of all, everyone is going to cheat. If you don't, there are people who will do it, and you never know if they get caught. If they do, good. If they don't, they get a better grade, wreck the bellcurve, and you - who spent weeks mugging and decided not to cheat - got a C+.

So you're asking me, then how are students supposed to take their exams then, if exams be done online or physically on campus?

Well, the exams can be switched to take-home assignments? Or it can be called entirely. SMU cancelled mid-terms, didn't they? Why couldn't NUS do the same?

2. SO WHAT'S HAPPENING FOR FINALS???

Now that mid-terms are over, we obviously can't do anything. So, what's going to happen for finals? We haven't received any news about it, and finals are approaching in 1 month. Obviously, the whole school can't have our finals together, and there isn't enough space to spread everyone out.

I just heard from my friend that Yale-NUS is offering an S/U option for their students. This means that they can remove a grade from a module that they sat for during finals. Unfortunately, normal NUS students don't get this advantage, so I guess we just gotta wait and see. Worst to worst, we all just die together ok. (RIP to those of you with no more S/U)

For some of our modules, physical classes still go on as usual because the class size is small. Class participation is now omitted because some people don't even turn up. For my stats class, though tutorials were cancelled, we were still required to come back to attend 2 more physical tutorials as part of an assignment that required us to collect data.

So, come class collect data - ok. But cannot have classes. OK.

Honestly, can NUS just cancel finals already. It's just so ridiculous that we have to be tested when we haven't learn jack shit this year. The whole semester feels like a joke. If finals is going to be online, I probably need to start making more friends, because everyone is going to take the paper together, and I'll just lose out if I don't do it too.

If I cheat, NUS calls me dishonest and I get penalised. If I don't cheat, I do less well than my peers and get a lousy grade imprinted on my academic transcript forever, which will affect me in the future when I want to apply for jobs (because employers will be picking the students with good grades, a.k.a the students who were smart enough to cheat).

3. CONTROL HALL KIDS

CCAs and events have already been cancelled in halls, and on campus to combat COVID-19. But, major gathering areas such as the food courts, study areas, or Starbucks at UTown still have plenty of people everyday, so why is nothing done about it?

On the other hand, is the school aware that the kids in hall are still going out to party regularly? My block literally went out for a drinking session last Wednesday. So we're only doing social distancing on campus, but some students can do whatever they want outside of campus and get infected and then bring COVID-19 back into the school halls and infect those of us who have been staying in?

Also, why aren't halls being closed down? Shouldn't students who have a place of residence in Singapore be asked to stay at home, with the exception of international students/ those with special considerations? I live in a block with 100 people and we share so many common areas. We may have our own rooms, but our proximity is so close I can literally hear my neighbour having sex.

Instead of forcing students to take their temperature twice a day - which is SO unnecessary because having a fever is a SYMPTOM which means that I already got the virus and already spread it to other people - more preventive measures should be put in place like urging the students to be socially responsible, cancelling physical classes, asking students staying on campus to go home, etc.

BTW, we can even get suspended if we skip the temperature taking exercise.

So, forget to take temperature can get expelled. Molest people still can continue studying lah. OK.

NUS PLEASE DO SOMETHING

To NUS, I know letting the students get what they want, or cancelling finals so they have it easy is probably the last thing you want, but you should seriously consider it. It may seem like the students are enjoying this entire Semester (which honestly, yes, I do enjoy not having to go for classes), BUT it is really unfair to put us in situations that are obviously disadvantageous for us. Either cancel our exams, or have exams online that are more manageable with proper cheating-preventive measures.

Anyway, there is a petition on Change.org for NUS to make this Semester Grade-less. Here's the link!

Update

Since this post was published, NUS has been an absolute MESS. Here's what happened in the span of one week:

• NUS is giving us 10MCs of S/Us (pass/ fail grades) to use, while SMU and NTU will be able to S/U their entire Semester
• NUS extended our reading week to 2 weeks
• NUS then extended our FINALS by 2 weeks without consulting many professors, and then 2 days later they changed it to extension by 1 week instead
• For many modules, we are left uninformed of these changes, with the updates on our changed finals dates only being changed on ModReg. We have no emails AT ALL on any updates for our finals from some professors

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION. DON'T SUE ME, I HAVE NO MONEY.