RuneScape and the hole in my stomach

"Technically challenging but uneventful."

Those were the words Nurse Lydia typed in a text message to my dad as I lay shivering under a pile of heated blankets in the recovery room in the bowels of Tan Tock Seng Hospital on 10 June 2020.

I had just undergone a successful medical procedure known as a percutaneous radiologically guided gastrostomy (PRG).

The PRG tube where it exits my abdomen.

It's a very fancy label for a very simple idea.

My radiologist Dr Sundeep looked at a live x-ray video feed of my abdomen. A tube was passed through my nostril, down my throat, and into my stomach (the technical term for this is nasogastric tube), and air was pumped into my stomach through the tube. This inflated my stomach like a balloon, so that it pushed away the surrounding organs such as the liver and colon, giving the radiologist a clearer field in which to operate.

The inflated stomach also came close to the abdominal wall. All the radiologist had to do was insert some sutures to tie the stomach lining to the abdominal wall to minimise the distance between them, then poke a hole from the outside of my abdomen to the inside, right through my stomach lining. He then threaded a feeding tube through the hole.

The feeding tube is kept in place by a tiny balloon inside my stomach, which is bigger than the size of the hole in my abdomen and therefore prevents the tube from falling out of me.

Why the procedure was technically challenging was because of my anatomy. My body is much smaller than that of a normal 22-year-old, but my organs are full-sized and have to cram into a much tinier space than they should. This had caused my liver to lie in front of my stomach during a pre-op computerised tomography scan, completely obstructing the approach from the front of my abdomen and making the radiologist unsure of the feasibility of the procedure.

If my liver didn't give way to my stomach, the radiologist would've been unable to reach my stomach to insert the feeding tube into it. They would've had to abort the procedure and done an open surgery instead, which would have involved heavy use of general anaesthesia and incurred lots of attendant risks to my safety.

The hope was that, when gas was pumped into my stomach, it would be able to push the liver away and expose itself clearly. There was a scary moment during the procedure when it looked like this wasn't going to happen. The medical team first pumped a tank of compressed carbon dioxide into my stomach through the nasogastric tube, but it didn't respond. My liver lay happily in the way still.

Then the medical team switched to "good old air", as the anaesthesiologist Dr Chan quipped, by connecting the external end of the nasogastric tube to a manual resuscitator (basically a rubber bag filled with atmospheric air) and getting someone to squeeze the resuscitator by hand. Poof! My stomach blew up nicely and my liver slid obligingly to the side, accompanied by running commentary from a relieved Dr Sundeep whose eyes were glued to the monitor showing the live stream from the x-ray machine.

Once this happened, the medical team went into action.

"Push 100mg of glucagon, STAT!" Dr Chan shouted. Disclaimer: I don't think he ordered 100mg. I made up that part because I can't remember exactly what he said, but 100mg looks quite impressive. Also disclaimer: I don't think he shouted, but in my favourite medical drama The Resident, the doctors are always shouting with great urgency and it's very exciting to watch, so I chose to describe Dr Chan as shouting to dramatise my account of the proceedings. In the same vein, I added "STAT" to the end of his dialogue to spice it up a bit. The doctors on television say "STAT" at the end of every sentence and it sounds so badass.

I felt the slight burn of medicine entering the intravenous plug in my right hand and before I knew it, my hearing had gone wonky. It was like I was listening to the medical team's chatter through a long, metal pipe. My eyes started to grow heavy and I struggled to remain conscious.

I observed with a detached sense of fascination a bedside monitor displaying my vital signs. "Damn," I thought. "My heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation are all really good and holding steady. Am I a tough little mo-fo or what!"

Someone said: "Ok Jonathan, I'm going to inject some local anaesthetic into your tummy area now. It's going to sting and burn. Ready? 1, 2, 3, ouch!"

I was so distracted wondering about the wisdom of a doctor saying "Ouch!" when injecting a patient that I hardly noticed the sting and burn. I mean, it did sting and burn, but it wasn't too bad.

At some point, Dr Chan shouted something about morphine and a bunch of other chemical names, and I started losing the battle to hold on to consciousness. "I'm feeling very drowsy," I complained to Nurse Lydia who was standing within my field of view (I was immobilised by a veritable forest of restraining straps so I couldn't see much). Earlier, she had told me that she would be there throughout the procedure, watching over me and making sure I was okay. She told me to just close my eyes. I did so with relief, and promptly went under.

That's not to say I was totally out of it. I soon heard someone saying my name, and I came back to full alertness almost instantly. "We're putting in the stitches now," said a voice. I groggily acknowledged, then fell asleep again.

My respiration must have suffered at some point because I suddenly felt a hand clamp my ventilator mask over my face, somewhat inaccurately because the mask missed most of my nose and spewed air everywhere. I'm very proud to report that I had the wherewithal to instruct the owner of the hand to "move the mask down" because "my right nostril is not covered". I heard someone say thanks before I drifted off again, feeling much more comfortable with the respiratory support.

The next time I woke up was when I heard my name being called again. "It's done," said Dr Chan. I was transferred from the procedure table to a hospital bed, and wheeled a great distance. "You're a good patient. Very compliant and didn't struggle," said Dr Chan along the way. I didn't respond but I was quite pleased to hear this compliment.

Finally, I rolled into the recovery room. I passed many other post-op patients. All of them were ancient, like my parents' age. I felt a little weird at this observation.

All things considered, I wasn't feeling too bad. I was sleepy but mentally alert. The morphine and chemical cocktail Dr Chan had concocted for me had reduced my pain level to 0. The only thing was, I was freezing. My jaw chattered and I shivered a bit. Nurse Lydia was very observant. She noticed and promptly had me swathed in thermal blankets. Then she sent the text message to update my dad on the successful procedure.

Hospital

Many people fear staying in hospital, but I'm a veteran of hospital stays so I don't mind having to be warded. Hospital stays can result in some quite interesting and funny occurrences.

Take for example my admission. I checked into the hospital on 9 June 2020, the day before the procedure, so that the doctors could ensure I was fit.

One of the tests they wanted to run was an arterial blood gas measurement, which involves taking blood from the artery in your wrist that causes your pulse. The junior doctor that came to do the extraction managed to hit my artery on the very first try, which was great because it minimised the painful poking and prodding I needed to endure.

But he was kinda clumsy, and high-pressure blood sprayed out of me and spurted everywhere: into the collection vial, all over my hand, his hands, my hospital gown, my bedsheet, and the floor. I felt like a pig in a slaughterhouse, or a bad guy in a John Wick movie.

Within an hour of checking in to the hospital, my pristine new bedsheet had become stained with my crimson life-juice.

At least the doctor was apologetic about the mess he made.

After the successful PRG procedure, I stayed in the hospital for two more days to recuperate, and was discharged on 12 June 2020.

I may not mind being warded, but I'll always have problems sleeping in hospitals. The nights I had to spend in the ward were pretty miserable. There was a poor old man in the bed across from me who looked very ill, and in the dead of night, the nurses would draw the curtains around him and spend hours doing goodness-knows-what to him. His bloodcurdling screams would echo round the building, and amazingly, he had the stamina to keep this up constantly until the nurses left him alone. The night after my procedure was the only night I could tune him out and get a good sleep, thanks to the able assistance of Dr Chan's drugs.

Another patient, who looked like 猪八戒 from the Chinese legend 西游记, was the opposite of noisy. He was admitted in some sort of catatonic state. He slept and slept and slept. One morning, the nurses wanted to wake him up to clean him and give him his breakfast.

They called his name. No response.

They patted him lightly. Nothing.

They rubbed his left nipple vigorously, sending shockwaves undulating across the fats on his torso. Still no luck.

Eventually, some woman standing by his bedside in civilian attire, who seemed to be a girlfriend of some sort, managed to get him to sit up and eat the hospital-provided meal. He still looked quite dazed. His eyes were glassy and he didn't answer when anyone spoke to him.

But as he ate, he underwent a miraculous transformation. His eyes focused, and he was able to answer the nurses. Out of a plastic bag, the presumptive girlfriend produced, of all things, a braised pork trotter. The man, every trace of catatonia now extinguished from his demeanour, tore into the trotter voraciously.

He was never the same after that. He was still there when I was discharged, but he looked much healthier than he had been when he came in. He was fully alert, responsive, and was always either playing with his phone or talking to the presumptive girlfriend.

Truly a medical miracle!

My daily life

What's the practical effect of the PRG feeding tube?

Well, to put it simply, it has allowed me to leave behind the mortal burden known as eating. Yes, I no longer am bound by the need to have meals to stay alive.

You see, the muscles in my face and throat were getting weaker and weaker by the day. This meant that eating was becoming a dangerous pursuit, as I was under a constant threat of choking or inhaling food and drink and causing a lung infection. I was also taking an inordinate amount of time to finish my meals. My dinners stretched to about 2 hours every day. Such time expenditure wasn't very sustainable, and I was very upset to imagine what better things I could've been doing during that time.

Now, instead of slaving over solid food, I subsist on a milk diet: 800ml of Ensure Plus each day. I take 400ml in the mornings and 400ml in the evenings. The milk formula is poured straight through the tube into my stomach.

This amount of milk formula was calculated by the dietician to be adequate for my daily nutritional needs. The beauty is that the formula is manufactured with the intention that it should be able to function as someone's sole source of nutrients, so it's perfectly balanced and contains literally everything necessary for my body to survive healthily.

So I don't even have to eat anything. Of course, I won't totally stop putting stuff in my mouth, 'cuz that would be just pathetic. After coming home from the hospital, I've still been drinking a Pepsi a day, and that won't change until the day I die. The great thing about the tube is that it's made of plastic, which means it doesn't react with anything and I can eat and drink whatever I want without worrying about whether it will affect the tube. I've eaten chicken rice chilli with no problems.

One part of my body that has benefited immensely from the new diet is my bowels. Funnily enough, even though my diet is now almost completely milk-based and liquid, my faeces has become the best quality that it has been for years! It's hard, dry, and big. Really big. And consistent. I go every day, and every day it's the same.

My first love: RuneScape

Nowadays, my "meals" go as follows.

First, my caregiver uses a syringe to suck stuff out of the tube and stomach. Sometimes, there will be some residual curds from the previous load of milk. There might also be gastric fluids or other leftover detritus from whatever I ate or drank in the preceding few hours. This step is important because if a lot of stuff is left behind in the stomach and I try to take in the next load of formula, I could get bloated or regurgitate.

Next, my caregiver pours the 400ml of formula into the tube via the syringe. Finally, 50ml of water is poured into the tube to flush it.

The entire process takes about half an hour. This means I suddenly have so much more free time.

On 4 June 2020, I posted on my social media channels my intention to obtain Level 99 in Fishing in RuneScape and put on the Fishing skillcape while recovering in hospital using the RuneScape Mobile app. To prepare for that plan, I bought and redeemed a bond, which is an in-game item bought using virtual currency which gave me 14 days of access to the full version of the game known as membership.

My social media post on 4 June 2020:

RuneScape has been a pillar of my life since I was in primary school. I have dedicated hours every holiday season to improving my character. But I was always free-to-play. I never became a member because I never had enough money of my own. Besides, I was a good student who never had the time to play during the school terms, so buying a subscription would have been a waste.

This changed today. I bought a bond for 19m in-game coins a couple of days ago after receiving news that next week, I am scheduled to undergo a simple yet elegant medical procedure which, if successful, would dramatically improve my quality of life. It would be a momentous occasion. Being a sentimental soul, I wanted to have a similarly remarkable milestone to match in my parallel, virtual life on RuneScape.

Despite my account being more than a decade old, I have not reached the maximum level in any of the skills in the game. As I said, I usually play infrequently so I never had enough game time to train my skills fully. So I planned my remarkable in-game milestone to be: attaining the maximum level of 99 in my favourite skill, fishing, then buying and wearing the special members-only cape that this achievement unlocks.

Today, I laid the groundwork for this plan by redeeming the bond, becoming a member for the first time ever. This membership lasts for 14 days. With access to more powerful training methods at the Fishing Guild's Deep Sea Fishing Hub (pictured), I quickly increased my fishing level to 98. I will continue to accumulate experience points over the next few days until I am just short of the threshold to cross to level 99.

And if the doctors manage to pull off the life-changing procedure next week, I will fire up RuneScape Mobile while recovering in my hospital bed, cross the threshold, then acquire and put on that sweet, sweet fishing skill cape.

The next day, I updated the plan to merely buying and wearing the skillcape in hospital because I'd already obtained Level 99.

My social media post on 5 June 2020:

I never thought I would live to see this glorious day.

Yesterday, I posted about wanting to achieve level 99 in fishing in RuneScape while recovering from my medical procedure scheduled for next week. But I ended up achieving it today instead because of a sudden burst of experience points that was awarded to my character by the game for finding and handing in some "strange rocks" to the museum. No actual catching of fish involved! Pictured here is the server-wide broadcast announcing my milestone to everyone who was online then.

I still plan on having a special moment in the hospital, just that now it will be me buying and putting on the fishing skill cape immediately rather than having to finish getting level 99 first. The 99k coins I will need to pay the guildmaster for the outfit are already in my coin pouch.

So it is a double celebration: today, 5 June 2020, I got my first level 99 ever in RuneScape; if all goes well, virtual me will don the fishing skill mastery cape for the first time ever on the afternoon of 10 June 2020, after real me has undergone the procedure.

As it turns out, I couldn't log into RuneScape Mobile while in hospital because there was a very uncomfortable intravenous plug embedded in my hand which made tapping my phone screen quite unwieldy.

So I bought and put on the skillcape on 13 June 2020 instead, when I was back home from the hospital.

The cape which certifies that I have achieved mastery in the Fishing skill!

The skillcape comes with its own unique cosmetic animation, called an emote.

I then used the remainder of my 14-day membership to immerse myself in the real RuneScape, which I had never before experienced in all my decade-plus as a free player.

Walking through the servers reserved for paying members, I shed tears of joy at seeing actual fellow players running by. It took me back to the heyday of RuneScape, in the 2000s, when the servers were almost always brimming with players. I flashed back to the previous time I played RuneScape after being discharged from hospital. It was 2008 and I had just recovered from having a titanium rod fused to my spine to correct my severe scoliosis. I was so happy to be able to play again after a marathon two-week-plus hospitalisation that I literally peed myself because I didn't want to leave the computer.

The servers for the free players of RuneScape these days tend to be sparsely populated, which makes me sad. It might seem weird that there are so many more paid subscribers than free users, but data from the developer of RuneScape shows that more than 90% of players are members. This is due to the niche nature of the RuneScape community. It's not a game that appeals to a mass audience. The gameplay mechanics are repetitive and grindy and the pace is largely sedate. Those of us who've stuck around through the years have more or less become loyalists and staunch supporters, which means we're more likely to want to buy the proper gameplay experience.

The free version of RuneScape is more like a trial, but no one wants to try RuneScape nowadays. It's boring and doesn't give instant gratification, so modern consumers (you know, those with the attention span of a housefly) shun it for the flashy colours of Roblox or the heart-thumping excitement of Fortnite.

Anyway, have a look at this 8-minute-long video to take a break from all this reading.


Did you make it through the whole clip? You didn't, right? You housefly, you.

I think this video encapsulates two points very nicely.

1. This is what I mean when I say RuneScape isn't for everyone. Notice how I was running up and down the same stretch of forest repeatedly? Doing the same action over and over is a typical way of training skills in RuneScape.
2. But it also hints at why I love the game. Being disabled in real life, I literally can't do almost everything, not even basic things like jumping or cooking or catching animals. RuneScape allows me to do all these things and more. In this clip I'm practically doing jungle parkour! I can also cook, hunt, farm, and fish! Normal people play video games as a form of escapism where they kill enemies or monsters, because obviously you're not allowed to go around murdering stuff in real life. I'm just happy to be able to do mundane stuff that you probably take for granted, like climbing over fences and shovelling animal poop (yup, that's an activity in RuneScape).

Over the past few days, I've discovered that my nights have become rather long. Previously, I would struggle over my dinner until around 10pm, then be too exhausted to do much else. But now, I take my evening dose of formula at 6pm, then have the entire night free to do whatever I like.

It's an amazing feeling. It's like I've been liberated, a phoenix rising from the ashes of my past life. The PRG tube has given me my life back. The past couple of nights, I watched one-and-a-half-hour-long RuneScape videos on YouTube about the history of tutorials in the game. A senior content developer of RuneScape critically examined the design of the various iterations of the RuneScape tutorial through the years and from his analysis, I learned about concepts in user experience design like cognitive load and A/B testing, after which I was inspired to read up further about the topic and found this very insightful and timely article. So geeky, right? But such things do interest me, just that I never had the time to explore them before.

And having played RuneScape every night since coming home, I was loath to give it all up just because my 14-day bond had expired. I reasoned that now that I don't have to waste time on meals, I will have more time to work on my various personal and school projects during the day, and therefore more free time to play during the night.

So I checked out the pricing of the membership packages. It's S$13.99 per month, but there's a discount for buying more than a month at a go. A yearlong package costs S$128.99, which works out to S$10.75 a month. (In fact, membership gives me full access to RuneScape's retro counterpart Old School RuneScape as well. I have a character in that other version of the game under the same master account that I sometimes play to take a break from the main RuneScape. So I'm actually getting quite good value here!)

I checked my earnings for last month: I made well over S$500. I bought a one-year membership subscription so I don't have to worry about losing membership status for the next 12 months. I'm always buying nice things for others. It's high time I bought something nice for myself. And unlike food, which turns into poop immediately the next day only to get flushed into the sewers forever, this subscription guarantees me a year of fun anytime I want.

The user interface design of the process of buying stuff is really smooth. Looks like all that A/B testing was worth the effort.

I convinced myself that this purchase makes sense, and cross-checked my thinking with a trusted friend who concurred after doing some quick calculations (you know who you are *winks*).

Besides, what better way is there to celebrate coming through a "technically challenging" medical procedure unscathed and with a new lease of life?

Module reviews for AY19/20 Semester 2: I hope I still remember how to do this...

It has literally been a year since my last module review on this blog, barring the internship review I published in January, which was for only one special module.

But I'm back in school now, to finish my Honours degree! Having had such a good time at my internship worksite (you can read all about it at the link above), I was a little sad at the resumption of life as a student, mainly because I feared for my bank balance without the steady stream of income I had gotten used to over the preceding few months.

It's hard to justify buying a jumbo pack of trash bags that your family has totally no use for (I legit did this during my internship because Gobbler visited GIC and sold the trash bags dirt cheap) when your account has very few digits in its total.

Anyway, something happened just before the semester started that sweetened the deal and made me happier to return to the academic life. I covered it here, but in short, a research methods module which was previously a graduation requirement was made optional for those who don't write a thesis. That's great for me, because I hate research and wasn't going to write a thesis.

So I could take modules that were more interesting and appealing to me. Let's review what they were and how they turned out.

NM4238: Software Studies

MCs: 5 - priority for CNM Honours students, excess capacity may be granted to Year 3 CNM majors

Delivery:

Weekly 3-hour seminar, come prepared to discuss weekly assigned readings

Assessment:

One midterm essay and one final essay of roughly 3000 words each, broad topic will be defined but students are free to write anything within those boundaries = 55%
Weekly blog entries reflecting on the assigned readings + class participation = 45%

Lecturer: Associate Professor Lonce Wyse - 6/10

I think A/P Wyse knows his stuff. His fields of expertise are neural nets and artificial intelligence-generated art, and he can talk at length about them. He clearly loves them very much, which is kinda cute to be honest. Unfortunately, he's a real scatterbrain. I'm not sure if he even had a plan for the semester or was just making stuff up week by week. The assignments were quite free-and-easy, which was cool, but what was not cool was that the entire module felt so free-and-easy that it lacked structure and was just chaotic. His classroom management also left a lot to be desired. He aims for an open discussion-style of teaching, but instead lessons are filled with awkward pauses. Given that he's been in NUS like forever, he should know that we're not the most talkative bunch. We are far from those American chatterboxes you see on shows like High School Musical. It's up to our lecturers to manage our reticence and devise clever schemes to engage with us. That's why they're paid the big bucks. But he didn't do this.

Module: 6/10

I absolutely hated the first half of the module. It was full of philosophical mumbo-jumbo about software being a metaphor for the police and justice system, and programmers as being sexually deviant wizards (yes, the Harry Potter kind) who have fetishes for code instead of genitalia. I kid you not. Hand on heart, that's what I took away from the first few weeks of the semester, though I'll admit this is probably a big misunderstanding. The second half of the semester was much better, earning some marks from me and rescuing the module from a failing score. It was about ethical issues surrounding artificial intelligence as well as technological arts. At least those made sense to me. I mean, I can imagine why it's bad to let the government know your every movement through tracking your phone, and I can see how an artwork created by a machine learning algorithm is different from one that was created by a human.

NM4239: Digital Propaganda and Public Opinion

MCs: 5 - priority for CNM Honours students, excess capacity may be granted to Year 3 CNM majors

Delivery:

Weekly 3-hour seminar, come prepared to discuss weekly assigned readings

Assessment:

Midterm take-home essay exam, questions are released on a specified date and students are given two days to submit a response = 20%
Propaganda in my life, individual assignment where you reflect on where you personally encounter propaganda, what kinds of propaganda you encounter, and how propaganda affects you = 15%
Leading discussion, pairs of students are assigned one of that week's readings to summarise and lead the class to discuss and engage with critically = 15%
Group project, a qualitative study using the in-depth interview method on how people perceive propaganda = 35%
Class attendance and participation = 15%

Lecturer: Assistant Professor Taberez Neyazi - 7/10

Dr Taberez could deliver his lessons smoothly and with little difficulty, though at times he would get a little too excited over what is clearly his pet topic and ramble on incoherently for longer than the average undergraduate's attention span at 9 o'clock in the morning. Re-read that sentence to get a feel of what I mean. His classroom management can also be improved. Specifically, if he would like students to have a lively discussion, he needs to figure out how to spark such a discussion into life beyond just begging people to say something or threatening to deduct participation marks. Otherwise there's just a lot of silence and shifty sidelong glances, followed by a reluctant throwaway point raised by one of the less apathetic members of the class.

Module: 8/10

The words "despair" and "hopeless" are what I would use to describe my feelings after learning about propaganda from this module. Propaganda is everywhere. It's an unstoppable force, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. Basically, it's not a problem that can be fixed. The reason we study it is so that we, as individuals, can try to inoculate ourselves against it as best we can so that we don't end up being that Boomer who forwards "drink disinfectant to cure coronavirus" to 200 people on WhatsApp. I dunno if that's the effect we're supposed to experience after learning about propaganda, and somehow I don't think it is, but that's what it did for me, making my innards roil with confusion and conflict. But don't misunderstand: this module is certainly enlightening as it will open your eyes to the many forms propaganda can take, both online and offline. And that's certainly knowledge worth arming yourself with, especially in this terribly complex world we find ourselves in.

NM4247: Creative Writing in the Marketplace

MCs: 5 - priority for CNM Honours students, excess capacity may be granted to Year 3 CNM majors

Delivery:

Weekly 3-hour seminar, broken down into about 1 hour of lecture and 2 hours of hands-on writing work and peer critique

Assessment:

Two micro-essays of around 500 words each, telling a personal story about a topic that will be given = 5% per micro-essay = 10%
Narrative arcs assignment, watch some videos and break the stories down into their essential components = 5%
Personal essay, telling a personal story of about 1000 words on any topic you want = 5% for a pitch, to be written like an email to an editor in which you try to convince them to publish your story + 20% for the story proper + 5% for three proposed Instagram posts telling the story in more social media-friendly form = 30%
Group project, write a script for a video advertisement = 30%
Class attendance and participation = 25%

Lecturer: Ms Jinny Koh - 8/10

As the published author of a full-length novel, Ms Koh has the right to teach this creative writing class. It's clear that she knows the nuts and bolts of a good story, and she was fairly capable of imparting that knowledge to us students, especially given that teaching isn't her real job and she was taking the class as a side gig. I felt she took the "workshopping" idea, where students were supposed to work on writing tasks in class and then comment on one another's products, a little too seriously at times. I much prefer the style where the instructor themself is the one to walk around the room and give personalised feedback to each individual student as they work on the writing tasks independently, as my NM2220 instructor did. Writing is a solo endeavour and doesn't quite lend itself to group activities, at least in my opinion.

Module: 8/10

I can see the value in having this module. Storytelling is an important part of the public relations toolbox. Indeed, it can be said that the entire act of public relations is telling a story. Certainly, a good story can be a powerful way to bring across a point. Just think of public awareness campaigns that have stuck with you: chances are, you remember them because they told you a story that resonated with you. This module succeeded in conveying the key lessons we need to know about storytelling, such as the structure of a narrative. We also had the chance to apply what we had learned through the video script assignment, which had us write a script for an advertisement promoting a brand or cause. This is a pretty good simulation of what storytelling will be used for in a real company. But a large chunk of time was spent on the personal essay assignment, which essentially got us to write a short story about an incident from our life. The relevance of this portion of the module to the industry wasn't clear enough.

NM4881A: Topics in Media Studies: Social Media

MCs: 5 - priority for CNM Honours students, excess capacity may be granted to Year 3 CNM majors

Delivery:

Weekly 3-hour seminar, read weekly readings for some discussion but lecturer also includes other ad-hoc activities too

Assessment:

Two in-class quizzes = 10% + 15% = 25%
Forum posting, make 3 original posts (students will sign up for the weeks they will post on to avoid bunching) and 2 replies on the LumiNUS discussion forum based on the assigned readings = 20%
Leading discussion, each student group will choose two research articles outside the assigned readings to present and lead a class discussion on = 20%
Social media audit, each student group will pick an organisation to conduct a social media audit on and prepare a slide deck as if to present their findings to the organisation itself = 15%
Final paper and presentation, each student group will write a paper and give a presentation on any topic of their choice that is related to social media = 20%

Lecturer: Dr Kokil Jaidka - 9/10

Dr Jaidka is a newly minted academic. This was the first class she had ever taught as a full-time faculty member. I believe in rewarding effort and attitude, which is why she has received such high marks from me. Her teaching was not perfect. For one, she was disorganised. Assessment components were changing throughout the semester, and even during her weekly lessons, there were times when she seemed to lose her train of thought or not have a clear idea of what she wanted to do or say. But her heart is in the right place, as the cliché goes. Her communication with students was always open and honest. Indeed, one of the reasons why assessment components were changed frequently was because she was responding to student feedback in real time. I think when she was planning the module, she got carried away and went overboard with the amount of work she wanted to assign because she lacked the experience to have a sense of what load students can handle. But full credit to her for remedying the situation mid-course by lightening some of the requirements and being flexible with deadlines. She was also caring towards all her students. When the coronavirus situation started to turn threatening, she promptly and proactively took her lessons online to be delivered through Zoom, weeks before the university mandated it. Decisiveness like this is what will win the war against the pandemic. Her enthusiasm is also admirable and a pleasant change from her jaded senior colleagues. I enjoyed her random emails which showcased a sense of humour that I had previously thought only I possessed.

Module: 8/10

Given how deeply embedded into our everyday life social media is, it's useful to know some of the concepts taught in this module. For example, one of my LinkedIn connections keeps talking about this thing called the "strength of weak ties" when explaining why he accepts connection requests quite freely, but I had no idea what the "strength of weak ties" was until I took this module. Sociologist Mark Granovetter coined the theory, which encapsulates the idea that when you have many weak ties, you can receive more valuable information that is not available to those in your immediate network of close relations. In other words, weak ties act like bridges between ourselves and the outside world. You can think of a weak tie as an acquaintance or an online "friend" you've never met in real life, and a strong tie as someone you know personally. Social media is essentially a giant network connecting users together. Studying the nature of these connections forms the bulk of what social media studies is all about. This isn't a purely academic exercise: useful insights do emerge. For example, research suggests that the tactic of using influencers in marketing is not optimal. It is very rare to see any one individual influence many other people, and in fact 70% of conversations are generated by non-influential users. Many of our decisions are made when influenced by the people we are emotionally close to. So marketing should move away from using influencers, and try to tap on people's personal connections instead. As you can see, there are little nuggets of wisdom scattered throughout this module. In-class hands-on exercises also have students play with tools such as sentiment analysis algorithms and keyword monitoring programmes. These are practical skills which communications practitioners should probably have some experience with, especially those who are working in social media marketing jobs in the future. Why didn't this module get more marks from me? I felt there were too many assessment components. Removing one and redistributing its weightage among the others would restore balance. I would suggest scrapping the final group paper and presentation, then allocating 5% more to the social media audit to make it worth 20%, 10% more to the leading discussion component to bring it up to 30%, and 5% more to the first quiz to make both equivalent to 15% for a total of 30%.

This semester hasn't been a highlight of my university life, but it wasn't bad either. Amid the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, I'd say that all things considered, this semester went as decently as could reasonably be expected: just average, not outstanding for the right or wrong reasons. In the end, I utilised 5 out of the 10 modular credits of the special Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory allowance given by the university to cushion students against the psychological impact of the pandemic, by erasing the A- grade I got for NM4881A. As all my other module grades for the semester were either A's or A+'s, my cumulative average point inched up by 0.02 and now sits at 4.85, well above my graduation target of 4.00 upon 5 for an Honours with Distinction.

And there goes my second-last set of module reviews ever! Next semester will be my final one before I venture into the working world for good, which means the next set of module reviews, which should be up on this blog in the new year, will also be the last of their kind.