The course comes in two parts: geology, which is not in the final and finishes after the midsem, and applied geotech, which extends previous work in soil mechanics into much more exciting applications like piles, footings and walls. The joy of the open book final is negated by its incredible difficulty, not me or one person I know fully finished the final exam, yet I still got a HD so don’t worry too much, it’s designed to be that difficult. Get a good group to do the two-part fieldwork assignment with. You need to go map some rock geology which can be done in one day if you get there early and know what you are doing. On another day you need to do a self-guided walk looking at rock structures (fun) which will take at least 4 hours. While the lecturer in the geology part of the course might seem to be rambling about lecture slides filled with pictures it’s actually quite important and has helped me in the field for industrial training in geotech.