Hey friends! Welcome to another What It's Like series!

So it's that time of the year when people are waiting on their university application results, and if you're one of the lucky few that got accepted - congratulations! Now that you've secured a place in university, your next thought would probably be: "what modules should I take?" or "what should I major in?".

I'm in my fourth year at the National University of Singapore (NUS) majoring in psychology. My journey in psych and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) has been an... interesting one. Like, in all honesty, I have no idea what I'm doing here! Everyone in this major is so smart and I feel like the odd one out.

When everyone asks me why I chose to major in psych, my answer is that I wanted people to think I'm smart. I initially wanted to major in Communications and New Media (CNM), but FASS people like to joke and say that CNM kids are the "bimbos and influencers", while those majoring in psych or econs are the smart kids.

So yeah, I was like, "I want to be smart!" and that was how I got myself into this mess. But of course, there's another reason, which is that I majored in mass communication back in Singapore Poly. So the overly enthusiastic Year 1 me wanted to take on a challenge instead of studying the same ol' thing. Well, look where that got me HAHA.

Psychology is a popular course, and with mental health becoming a more pressing issue in recent years, more people are pursuing this as a career. If you want to study psych at NUS but don't know what to expect, you're at the right place! In today's post, I will try my best to share (very briefly) about my experience as a psychology student in NUS, and of course feel free to ask me any questions/dm me/email me if needed.

If you're from cohort 2020 and before, you'll have to get a grade of at least B- for both the PL1101E and PL2131 modules to major in psychology. Now, this was a major stressor for me because PL2131 is a statistics module - yes you need to learn statistics! I was a poly student who majored in communications, and I never learned statistics. The last time I came close to learning stats was in secondary school, and it was very basic. So you can guess that I died taking PL2131, and what made it worse was that everyone else - especially the Junior College (JC) students - had some kind of knowledge in stats since it was taught in JC, so the bell curve was never in my favour sobs...

I got a D+ when I took PL2131 for the first time, which meant I would have to retake it if I still wanted to major in psych. So I got a friend to tutor me every Monday night and retook PL2131 and eventually got a B+!

If you're from cohort 2021 you won't need any pre-requisite to major in Psychology, but stats will still be a major part of your uni life, so don't start rejoicing yet! This is because many of the modules require you to conduct research and analyse the data. There's another worse stats module than PL2131 which is PL2132, and even though I got a B for that, the whole process was hell haha.

In Year 1, you'll probably take PL1101E (Introduction to Psych) as well as PL2131 during your first two semesters. In Year 2, you'll have to take the psychology core modules which are PL3232-PL326: Biological Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology, Developmental Psychology and Abnormal Psychology. In Year 3 onwards you can start taking more specialised Level 3/4/5 modules depending on your interests and in Year 4 some people choose to do a thesis.

I know modules like Biological Psychology and Cognitive Psychology sound incredibly scary, and I'm here to tell you that... they are. Hahahaha. Aside from these two modules, the others are pretty okay and you can rely mostly on your understanding. Both bio and cog psych is very content heavy and you need to memorise stuff, which is why most people take these modules when they go for exchange. I was supposed to take them during my summer school, but unfortunately, Covid happened so I couldn't go. The only silver lining to this was that bio and cog psych became open book during finals, so I didn't have to eat my entire textbook.

There's a shit ton of information about this so I'll just drop the link here. The most challenging part about uni life aside from studying is planning which goddamn modules to take. I didn't have a lot of psych seniors when I was a freshie and coming from poly I had even fewer friends who were going to uni with me, so I had a really hard time understanding the NUS bidding system and how to plan my modules.

Thankfully NUS got rid of the bidding system so now it's much easier to get the modules you want. Of course, priority also depends on your seniority. Usually, I'd try to register for modules that fewer people are taking. Also, it's typically harder to get popular modules in the first semester so it's best to avoid the first wave of kancheong spiders, and just register for these modules in semester two.

Planning what modules to take is very stressful, and the NUS website doesn't really help much. It's just an information dump with so many words and looking through it just heightens the anxiety. Generally, the rule of thumb is to clear all your Exposure modules (the ones labelled with 'E' behind such as PL1101E), General Education modules (GEH, GEQ, GER, GES, GET) and core modules (PL323X) by the end of Year 2.

Below is a sample study plan I found on the FASS website. I used it as a rough guide to planning my modules and it's been quite helpful! Another very useful tool most people use when planning their timetable is NUSMods. Trust me, it'll be your best friend for the next four years.

Typically, any modules with the words 'biological', 'stats' or 'neuro' would be the harder ones or the ones to avoid haha, unless it's a core module then you really can't run away from it. I generally enjoyed Abnormal Psychology (PL3236) and Developmental Psychology (PL3236) because they're much easier and both have similar content. Most people take them at the same time too.

For Level 3 modules, I enjoyed taking the adolescent psychology ones such as PL3244 and the professors teaching those modules tend to be more fun. Content-wise it's also more enjoyable for sure. The social psychology modules are also very interesting and the theories learnt can actually be applied to real life. If you're interested in clinical psychology, I recommend PL3257 (Introduction to Clinical Psychology) because the content was really interesting and the prof did a good job in explaining all the concepts.

Another interesting module was PL4880P (Psychology of Religion). This was a rather enjoyable module and the projects were fun too. The prof was quite chill, but he really takes note of class participation, so be prepared to class-part-slut-it-up. There was a lot of essay writing (which is something I score at) and lots of critical thinking as well. But the best part is that there were no written exams!

One of the most misleading modules (when I say misleading I mean modules that look easy but are not) is PL3248 (Learning and Conditioning). Almost everyone who took this module told me that it's a lot harder than it looks. It sounds fun of course, and I won't say it wasn't, but this module was so content-heavy and there are a shit ton of terms to remember. If you want to take this module, you'll have to have a really good understanding of the concepts because it's not about memorisation at all but application, and I guess I sucked at that. The pace of the course is super fast too, and you can't afford to miss a single lecture. Also, let's not even forget the weekly quizzes and difficult assignments - I had to design a behavioural change experiment for myself from scratch!

Before majoring in psychology, I had no idea that psych had so much stats involved. There's also a lot of research involved, which thankfully is one of my strengths. This is why I usually take up the researcher role during group projects and let others take on the stats role.

Speaking of group projects, there are lots of them. I personally enjoy group projects because we can leverage each others' strengths. Most of the group projects come in the form of presentations followed by a report, and so far I find psych students generally easy to work with. At least within my own groups, we're all friendly and professional with one another, and I've never experienced any drama.

I think the culture of psych is very competitive, but everyone helps each other out. Before finals, some of my friends would organise study sessions together and we'd just mug together until the exam day, and I've also had friends who helped me with my assignments over Zoom calls. So yes the culture is very competitive in general and everyone strives to do their best, but they help each other out too!

I honestly can't believe that I'm entering my last year. The past three years just flew by in a flash, and sometimes I still feel like a freshie. I still get nervous when planning for modules, I still mess up during my exams, and I still have no idea how to use Excel to map graphs. So I guess it's normal if you feel nervous because even after four years, I still am!

Being a psychology student has been very tough and even though I don't intend on becoming a psychologist in the future, I enjoyed learning about the content and it has given me lots of insight into my own life. So for all of you psych hopefuls, I wish you all the best in your uni journey!

See you next post (:

Faithfully yours,