GEK1900/GEH1049 Public Health in Action Module Review

Hello!

I heard a lot of good things about this module and I had one Breadth module left to take so I decided to go with this.

Firstly, beware if you’re from the AY14/15 batch or earlier where the new GE system doesn’t apply for you. They don’t offer it under GEK1900 anymore!!! I had to appeal to get it. I was so upset because it’s like hello, we still exist. But I guess it’s fine because we will soon graduate and be gone from this school forever and you who are reading this are probably from the later batch.

Module Content

It’s a 3 hour seminar slot every week and I had the Monday 9am one……… amazingly I survived haha. It’s 1 hour lecture, break for group work, then come back to the lecture hall again. Every week, there would be a new lecturer to speak about a different topic in public health. That kept things interesting so we’d get like a broad overview of different issues. I thought that was quite nice. I do find public health interesting in and of itself and so I enjoyed the lectures. Some were really interesting like work and health, HIV; others were less interesting like global health architecture (say what?) or antibiotic resistance (come again?).

Grading

1.       Every week there’ll be a quiz at the first 5-10 mins of lecture (which means you cannot be late. But Monday 9am D: ) they will test on the readings which you are supposed to read beforehand. You’re supposed to SMS the answers to the given number. So… as the weeks went by, the lecture hall got more and more empty and everyone just asked their friends for the answers so they can SMS in the comfort of their homes lol.

2.       Group work every week. You were supposed to submit by the end of 45 mins each week, so nothing too heavy was expected. Not so in depth. Realistically, how good a piece can you write in 45 mins? Anyway, the groups were formed by the lecturers at the start so you should pray hard that you get year 2s and above in your group who know how to cite references properly because they’re quite particular about it.

3.       2 individual assignments, one due about week 5 and one at the end of the sem. No finals!!!

Reflections

I enjoyed listening to the lectures. As the weeks went by, you can see less and less people typing away on their laptops to take notes and more and more people sleeping in lecture lol! But honestly you don’t have to take notes because there’s no finals! And the individual assignments don’t really have much to do with the lectures. So just enjoy the learning process! You are here to learn, right? I don’t really get why people come into lecture to sleep/talk to their friends – but I guess there are always 2 kinds of people and this is a story for another day. 

See you soon,

L