GEOS3321/1111 – Fundamentals of (Petroleum) Geology
Ease: 7/10 – There’s a lot of content, there’s no understanding required – pretty much you just memorize the shit out of it. If you’re a good memorizer, then it’s a good course to take, otherwise I’d suggest you don’t do it. Even then, if you’re a petroleum student, you have no choice anyway.
For 1111 – you get two lab tests, around 15%-20% each, and then you also have an excursion to go to, which is around 15% or so. Take 1111 if you are risk averse.
For 3321 - you also get two lab tests, one worth 23% and another worth 27%. That’s a pretty huge weighting and if you get a crap mark, then welp, GG your marks are gone.
The first lab test is a rock test, and it’s marked out of 22. You have 3 minutes to look at each rock and answer questions. You have 6 rocks to get through and thus the time taken for the exam is only 18 minutes. The 2nd lab test is a mapping test, in which you spend the whole hour doing. It’s not that difficult but you need to make sure you know your stuff properly, otherwise you could make a lot of mistakes, like I did unfortunately.
Content: 3/10 -> lots and lots of content to go through. Thank goodness they literally give you the written component of the final exam, otherwise everyone would be screwed. Tbh most of the content is pretty dry, so it’s something you have to deal with if it’s a compulsory course for your major.
Oh and the difference between 1111 and 3321 is that in 1111, you learn about coal and the economic minerals, whereas in 3321, you learn about petroleum related stuff. The first section is in common with each other.
Lecturer: Catherine Chague-Goff -> 6/10. She tries to teach, but she gets boring. Nevertheless puts up the exam MC questions up on the board to encourage ppl to come to lectures. There are other lecturers but I didn’t go to any of the other lectures.
Tutor: N/A
Lab: 9/10 – I found the labs to be very helpful tbh – it’s worth going to get yourself some knowledge of the rocks and skills learned for the lab tests.
Overall: 6/10 – Geology is easy, but tbh it’s not my thing personally. Nevertheless I do know it can be taught better and more engagingly.
PTRL2018 – Introduction to Petrophysics
Ease: 4/10 – Things were all over the place. There was too much content to sort through and a lot of assessment tasks/assignments to do. There’s all these files everywhere and different sources given to us. Unless if you’re a pro memorizer or have photographic memory, then you might have difficulty with this course, as it is pretty much rote-learn.
Content: 4/10 – too much content to learn in this course. Everything is so dry and a lot of it is generally difficult to understand due to lack of context and explanation. Most things are simply just rote-learn and you don’t really get to know why it works, more like just how it works.
Lecturer: Ryan Armstrong -> 6/10 – he’s that typical monotone lecturer, but if you ask him for help he is willing to lend you a hand. He’s actually a very nice person; just that I couldn’t stand his lectures and thus I skipped a lot of them.
Tutor: Ryan Armstrong again – his tutorials were indeed very helpful for the final exam overall – I should have re-did the tutorials to make sure my understanding was solid enough.
Lab: Zhixi Chen – 7/10 – he’s a nice chilled lab demonstrator who values safety first as opposed to being on time for the lab. He doesn’t care if lab reports are similar or same, as long as the information provided from you is correct and accurate. During his lab explanations, it’s pretty boring at times. I’d rather have him speak mandarin to me so that I can actually get engaged with what he is saying tbh.
Overall: 5/10 – too much content, but stuff is marked pretty easily. Plus finals were easy as Ryan Armstrong copied past papers from 2012 beforehand. Also the fact that you have to pass each component to pass the course is a pain, and that actually made me worried for finals as well :/
PTRL2019 – Reservoir Engineering A
Ease: 7/10 – The content itself is easy, as well as the derivations. It’s just that you have so much content to memorize and it’s a pain if you don’t actually remember it on the day of the exam. The hardest content of technical difficulty was pseudo-steady state flow and that required integration by parts. Apart from that, go ahead and just memorize. It used to be harder when Furqan Hussain was the lecturer.
Also finals were easy as it was a repeat of past papers that were previously on the Z-drive until they got rid of it recently.
Content: 8/10 – It’s very well structured, and course notes are more than enough for you to generally answer every single question – just memorize the course notes and you’re more than fine to answer any question that pops up. Effectively speaking, there’s less content in 2019 as opposed to 2018, as 2019 has more derivations as opposed to 2018, which is pretty much pure content.
Lecturer: Peyman Mostaghimi – 9/10 – He’s a new lecturer and replaced Furqan Hussain, and made the course easier. Peyman is a very engaging lecturer and can explain his content well. Sometimes on Monday morning lectures, he would get pissed at people coming in late, and he told me off twice for doing so.
Tutor: N/A
Lab: N/A
Overall: 9/10. Peyman please be my lecturer again and just copy off past papers pls. You literally saved my WAM from that disastrous course below (^^^).
Tbh seeing as people did well in the final and that he was very pleased with everyone in the course, he decided to bump the weighting of the final, cancel the weighting of the 2nd assessment task and in the end, a large amount of the cohort ended up with HD (including myself) for the course.
PTRL3025 – Petroleum Economics
Ease: 4/10. It’s easy in the fact that it’s basically a combination of FINS1613, ECON1203 and a bit of MATH1231 probability and stats. It’s hard in the fact that you have to attend 3x 8am starts every week. You have an 80% attendance rule enforced and there’s basically 2 people monitoring the attendance form to catch out jiggers and to make sure that people don’t sign on for other people. It’s also difficult in the fact that the exams are long and tedious for the time given, and the fact that it gets marked quite harshly.
So btw, if you want to jig, make sure you strategically jig your lectures so you use your skips in the most efficient way possible.
Another note - there are past papers that you can do, but Guy Allinson doesn't exactly copy questions from past papers, so make sure you actually study your content and know it in and out.
Content: 8/10 – the content is interesting, you just have to memorize a lot of it and learn how to apply it as well. Guy Allinson explains his content quite well compared with the rest of the lecturers. It’s not so much of an economics course, but more of a finance course imo. It should be called Petroleum Finance and Statistics instead of economics imo.
Lecturer: Guy Allinson – 5/10 -> He’s better this time round, as he actually takes economics seriously. He’s also very passionate about it, so you can tell he can get pedantic at times when you use the incorrect terminology. The big problem with him is the 8am starts, and occasionally if you jig lectures, leave half-way, arrive late, forge signatures, do bad stuff that is usually tolerated with other lecturers, he will call you out for it and he might choose to do dodgy shit and deduct marks out of you. Also IMO he’s still pretty hard to approach, but if you do approach him for consultation, he’d be quite willing to help you out.
Tutor: N/A
Lab: N/A
Overall: 4/10. Despite Guy Allinson being a better lecturer this time, this course caused a blow to my sleeping patterns, my total sleep time, my gym routine, my happiness, my sanity, my other subjects and ofc, my WAM. I literally lost a week of my AIESEC exchange trip just to come back and attend lectures for this course. I thankfully JUST passed it, so I’ll never have to deal with a single 8am start (unpaid) ever again. So much stuff was lost by doing this course, but thankfully I took it this semester to get it over and done with.
Overall, this semester was pretty shit. Lack of mathematics. Too much content. 3x8am starts. 4x late finishes. Whateven.jpg
Was thinking of just doing straight science (maths, stats) if there's just too much content to learn and if I don't actually learn anything.
