[MISC] Contemplating whether to celebrate your 21st Birthday? Here are some tips!

Dear Readers,

Are you considering whether you should celebrate your 21st birthday? Too much of a hassle? Too lazy to plan? Worried no one will turn up? Worried about costs? Worried you get shitty presents that's not worth the price you paid per head? No worries, this post will help you make the right decision!

Read on to find out more about why you should/ should not celebrating your 21st birthday!

Some of my friends asked me: Why is a 21st birthday so special that people have to celebrate it? Don't everyone turn 19. 22, 23, etc. once in a lifetime? 

My response: True, but the age of 21 is when you become legal to do many things, and when you get a whole lot more of responsibilities. It's the age when you are granted a lot more freedom and have higher accountability of your actions. Therefore, it is worth celebrating, and your celebration party can be a platform to catch up with friends that you haven't had the time to catch up with.

Is it too much of a hassle?
Depends on how large scale you want your celebration to be. I had a relatively simple one, with a mini activity to get everyone actively participating and entertained at the same time. So I had to prepare prizes for winning individuals and activity cards printed for the Bingo game. I also had a photobooth so I had to do up all the decorations and props, more pictures on this below(:

Location wise, I booked my venue 2 weeks in advanced and settled my food menu quite quickly with the hotel. My two-tiered birthday cake was ordered from my cousin's friend and was considered quite cheap, I got it at about $130, which is considered the cheaper end of two-tier cakes.

Too lazy to plan?
If you're a lazy person and your family and friends are also lazy to help you plan for your party, then celebrating will be a pain in the ass for you especially if you're not good at planning. Thankfully, for me, my family and friends were very supportive and helped me alot in giving me ideas and helping me out with the deco. Kudos to them <3

No money to celebrate? 
Celebrating doesn't mean you need to burn a hole in the pocket. I didn't spend that much on my party. For my decorations (photos will be shown below), I spent about $40 at most? Not kidding. My backdrop, table cloth, some table deco were purchased from Daiso. Balloons were purchased from the party store near Bencoolen Street. All the photobooth props were printed from home and handmade. Some props were also taken from home.

Depends on you really; One of my close friends recently celebrated at Park Royal @ Pickering. He booked the Presidential Suite for about 2k and catered food for his guests. He also ordered his cake from Plain Vanilla for 200 over dollars. So overall, he spent a lot more than I did although I sort of booked the entire hotel cafe and had a seafood buffet for my guests.

Also, another tip, if you have low budget, just plan to celebrate with a closer group of friends and family.

Shitty presents?
Do not set high expectations of your gifts. If you think about that, it might make you a lot more miserable. Anyway, it's always the thought that counts right? To me, having my friends attend my party is already the best gift, really!

So here are some of my 21st birthday pictures:

That's about it, folks! If you're interested, I celebrated my birthday at Bayview Hotel and stayed there for the night too! Feel free to comment below to find out more. Don't forget to follow me on Miss Lee's Life Story (:

Love,
Rachel

[School] NUS AY 15/16 Sem 2 Module Review: EC3371 Developmental Economics by Dr Elisabetta Gentile

Hi Readers,

Back with NUS module review again. This time round for EC3371. I realised the most recent module review for this module was for AY13/14 which made me hesitant in taking the module. So here's a review to help all make their decisions for your Econs elective modules.

Professor: Dr Elizabetta Gentile

Lectures:
2 hour lecture slots
Usually lasts 1 hour 35 minutes, occasionally ends early depending on feasibility of where lecture is stopped.

Lectures are held not in LTs but in AS6 since class size is small which was really not conducive for me to learn in especially when you come in 2 minutes before class and forced to sit all the way at the back of the classroom as the front seats are all fully filled.

Professor Gentile is very knowledgeable about this module which is really good because she really knows what she's teaching. To be honest though, everything she mentioned in lecture is pure regurgitation from the textbook. She leaves out some information from her slides and mentions them during the lecture, so it seems like there's a lot of information to note down. Truth be told, those info can be found in the textbook.

There will be a 10 minute break in between after the lecture has hit the 1 hour mark.

It seems like a lot of people do not attend lectures as it looks more like a class of 40 plus rather than 70.

Lectures are ok, not much to comment on.

Tutorials:
Graded presentations (20%)
Attendance and participation (10%)

Everyone will be split into 5 groups namely Alpha, Beta, Charlie, Delta and Echo, so for the first week of tutorial, Team Alpha will present a research paper that will be uploaded beforehand, then the next week, Team Beta will present another research paper. So after Team Echo has presented their first paper, Team Alpha will continue the next week to present the next paper for their presentation.

Each team will therefore need to present a total of 2 times. Each presentation is worth 10%. Since class is small, there is only 4 tutorial groups. Unfortunately or fortunately, my tutorial group was the smallest tutorial group with only 12 people. What does this imply?

Each team was only the size of 2 to 3 people, and my team only had me and another guy. My other friends, who were in larger tutorial size, had 5-6 people in their team. To me, that was really unfair because I was only a year 2 student with no background of EC3304, and I was tasked to present a phD research paper that had foreign terms like Difference in differences, IV regression, 2SLS, etc, all of which was not covered in EC3303. And EC3304 was not even a prerequisite for this module although indicated that it will be beneficial.

Thank god my partner was a Year 3 student that have taken EC3304 already, so he had a clearer understanding on the terms, and made it easier to work on the presentation.

Presentation grades for each round will be uploaded after the last team (Team Echo) have presented. It is graded out of 100.

Attendance and participation in included in the assessment of this module, and it made me really stress because whenever someone in the tutorial 'participated' aka, posed questions to the presenting team, the tutor will highlight your name to note that you did participate in that particular tutorial.

For my tutorial, Prof was my tutor and her expectations of tutorials were really high. Your questions had to make some sense or else she will end up rebutting against your point. In my opinion, to score for the participation component, just pose questions on parts of the presentation you are not clear on and if there are areas where labeling isn't clear in the presentation, ask the presenters to clarify. That earns you some participation grade too.

For those in larger tutorial groups, participation would be harder because everyone will compete to get their participation grade, so fastest hands as usual.

Always be punctual for tutorials!!! I once went into class early, placed my bag and went to the washroom cos I had a 3-hour Utown lecture before the tutorial, and when I came back it was 1 minute pass the start of class, and although the presenting team have yet to start their presentation, guess what? I was marked late....

You can never argue with Prof Gentile, she will always win the debate, so I just had to accept that I was marked down for attendance because I came in a minute late after going to the washroom..

Midterms:
Midterms was not that tough. Of normal difficulty, questions that tested a lot on your understanding on the concepts. What killed me was the first part of the paper, because she tested on specific definitions. She gave you the definition, and you had to identify which period is this referring to (eg. Malthusian period or which era of growth is this, etc.)

I did not expect that kind of definition question to come out, so I lost my 10 marks there.

Finals:
For me, it was a killer paper. Prof told us that the format of the paper is the same as midterms, but it turned out to be really different. Finals was supposed to be comprehensive, but she did not test anything from the first half of the lecture for content... Although mathematical questions from first half were tested (developmental and growth accounting)

Overall:
It was quite an ok module to take IF you like structured questions and you like challenge. Let me know if you guys have questions by posting in the comments column below!

Love,
Rachel