Category: Uncategorized

Burn out or depression? Which is which?

A recent message about burn out that was shared by a colleague makes me think about my friend.  What makes her to be depressed?  Is it triggered by burn out that she experience but go unnoticed?  Now, she has to take medication twice a day to regulate her state of well-being.  She has become medically dependent person.  I asked her, “How do you feel if you forget taking the medication once?”  She would say the effect would be immediate.  She won’t be able to fall asleep (stay awake more than 24 hours) and has difficulty to focus (due to sleep deprivation).  She said “I cannot ‘function’ and I will start to imagine things“.  That’s serious.  Since she was professionally diagnosed as having a depression, she was on medical leave for undisclosed period of time.  

But to tell the truth, it is not easy to distinguish between burn out and depression or to differentiate between burn out and stress unless we get someone who are clinically trained to do the diagnosis.  No one is immune of depression.  There are many cases of people who seem to have everything succumb to the bout of depression.  Some even inflict harm towards others or themselves. 

So, in this matter, one has to be vigilant and aware about one’s well-being.  Also, administrators too play important role to support and be emphatic to those who have started to show some “symptoms”.  Sometime, we overlook the physical symptoms that indicate underlying psychological problems that we might have.   

Of course, one can easily use depression, burn out and stress as an excuse of being less productive.  But, if we look at the person from different angle, does he/she display any symptom that indicate psychological problems that we should be aware of?  Is it fair to “punish” this person as being less productive and thus he/she is given low evaluation for the yearly appraisal even though he/she could not perform well due to undiagnosed psychological problems?  

It is an paradoxical phenomenon.  But perhaps in this rat race world, we need to be more emphatic towards each other, especially towards our own self.  Sometimes, we are more concerned about others and thus, we tend to overlook in taking care of ourselves. 

Matriculation Centre? Should it be abolished?

My pre-tertiary education was at IIUM matriculation centre.  1996.  The centre was in Lembah Pantai.  We used the buildings that belong to UM and Institut Bahasa (Language Institute).  I had a marvelous time during my matriculation days.  I learned about life, adulthood and being more independent there.  It was the first time I have to be away from my family (I am a Johorean).  

I have friends that I have known since my matric years whom I still keep in touch until now.  But unlike now, my matriculation programme took me two years to finish.  So, in a way it is like I am taking STPM.  No difference.   

The issue now, some perceive that ex-matriculation students are less matured etc.  I beg to differ.  I think it will always bog down to the fact that how adaptable students are to further their studies at university level after they finish one year of matriculation programme.  In this case, I do agree with DVCAI of UTM.  

What are the impacts of Latihan Ikhtisas?

I have been wondering about it myself.  Well, to tell the truth, what I gain from the LI is a new experience of teaching adolescents (and its challenges).  Well, that’s it.  Networking?  Indeed.  Networking with the school.  Yup.  I still conduct tuition class and whatnot as a form of my after-LI-service.  

Making impact or difference in the students lives?  How on earth would I know that?!!!  I am not going to be overambitious on this part.  After all, only Allah knows best on this matter.  

Other than that?  Nothing much.  For example, did I get any  Industrial grant?  Nope.  So, it does resonate with the survey findings.  

Well, perhaps I can tell what I have gone through instead.  Yup.  It might take a while since I need to look at evidences that I collected in various forms such as daily journal, students reflective notes and such.  

I have posted some personal rambling on various posts.  Here are some of them:

Things that I produce when I did Latihan Ikhtisas_Part 1

Things that I produce when I did Latihan Ikhtisas_Part 2

Teaching poetry and literature

Latihan Ikhtisas Part 1

Latihan Ikhtisas Part 2

Latihan Ikhtisas Part 3

Latihan Ikhtisas Part 4

Latihan Ikhtisas Part 5

Gamification

I first came across this concept in late 2016.  I attended a one day course about Gamification by a former senior of IIUM (Zayd Ali Alsagof).  I never met him while at IIUM.  He was two years senior.  The chances that I would take the same class would be slim if he majored in psychology.  Most of the time, we would take the courses based on level (of difficulty).  Looking at the course code, you can understand that the course is meant for students at certain year of study.  It does not mean that if you are a first year student, you can’t take courses which are meant for final year student.  It is just that you will “struggle” a lot because the courses would be much complicated and most instructors would assume that you already know some of the theories that you would learn in different classes that you take in junior year.  

So, here I am teaching at a university and yet I am struggling to learn about the current things in education.  I went to this gamification workshop on volunteer basis because I feel that I need to improve my teaching practice.  I want to “inject” something new in my teaching every semester.  That’s my aim.  In sha Allah 

I learn a lot from the course.  But there are so many things that I have yet to explore even though some of the things are not free like Prezi. or Padlet.  One thing at a time. 

One of the things that I immediately implement in my class is online assessment. It is not that we don’t have online assessment on UTM elearning, but the feature is different from other online assessment such as Quizziz, Kahoot! and such. 

So, I tried Quizziz in my MPPU1024.  The students felt excited because it is like playing a game, rather than taking a test.  There are immediate feedback/answers using memes and there is also a ranking.  Yup.  All “players” will be ranked.  At the end of semester, I asked the students to give me feedback about the activities that we did in class.  Some of them give positive notes about Quizziz.  I wrote a paper and presented it in a conference in 2017.  Since then, I start to collect more data every time I use Quizziz in my class.  But, it is kind of challenging to get feedback from students unless it is considered as a part of the grading.  Another challenge, another way to tackle.  One thing at a time.  This is what make teaching interesting.  There would always be challenges that you need to deal with.   Never ends.  

Why do students leave question(s) unanswered?

I have just finished marking the final exam of one course.  Other than multiple choice questions, there are also open-ended questions (short answer questions).  Not that difficult or challenging.

How wrong I was?  When I first marked few of the students exam scripts, I was impressed because they can use their own words to explain various concepts.  So, I gave full marks for this.  Then, as I read the answers of other students (by this time, it was the tenth student), I started to notice a decline of satisfactory answer.  Am I being too strict because of the different time frame of marking?  The first tenth were marked after sahur and the remaining ones were after I have started fasting more than 2 hours.  No.  It couldn’t be that.  I was still feeling fresh and alert.  Am I being affected by the noise of scam phone ringing?  It couldn’t be it.  I felt a bit annoyed but I took a break for a while before continuing marking.  

I further read more exam scripts.  Yup.  I started to find that some students even left one or two questions unanswered.  What went wrong?  I guess, perhaps they cannot find any clue from the MCQ section.  Well, a good question will not give hint of any answer to the other question.  

When I looked again closely the five questions, well, the questions seem complicated but the answers to all of the questions are straight forward.  It does resonate with this saying “sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple“.

So, why do students leave question unanswered?

There are many reasons.  One of it is perhaps they might not have enough time to write the answers.  Second, rather than writing a wrong answer, some might perceive that it is better not to write any answer at all.  Third, they simply do not know the answer or don’t have any idea/clue to write anything at all.  As a teacher, what should I do about this?

Scam? Oh please

I came a bit early today because I was planning to finish my marking.  Finally, the students have submitted their assignments and all so that I can start marking their papers etc.

Around 805am, the land line phone in my office rang.  I was a bit suspicious.  Who on earth will call me this early when I know that half of my colleagues are not even in the office yet.  I just let the phone rang unanswered.  Then, it stopped.  Well, at least it stopped ringing on my phone but there was a phone ringing nearby my office.  Yup.  My next door neighbour’s phone was ringing.  It rang for several minutes before it stopped (well, this neighbour of mine will not come to his office during exam period this early.  That’s his routine since the last few years). 

But then I faintly heard another sound of phone ringing.  It must be one of the few doors neighbour’s phone.  What a heck!  I thought it has stopped (few weeks ago, there was another colleague got this kind of call.  He answered but he was informed that he got some loan etc. and needs to settle certain amount of money to certain bank).  This is clearly a scam.  Beware guys!  This is an example of digital fraud.  There are many cases which might leave traumatic experience to some.  My stance: Stay calm.  Don’t panic.  Know your financial state.  

Since when we become the dumping ground ….

It has been more than a year since I watched Malaysian TV channels (yup, I am not purposely avoid watching any of the channels, it is just that somehow the coverage at my area receives Singapore based channels better than the local ones).  I was shocked to watch the news clip about Malaysian is being a dumping ground of non-recyclable waste of developing countries.  This is a classic example of “bullying” at global level.  It is kind of ironic when the same countries propagate global warming issues, sustainability and such and yet, they “dispose” their garbage at another countries like Malaysia, Philippines,  and who-knows-what other countries might be the victims here. 

Is it ethical?  Is it morally right?