Hadijah binti Jaffri

There is this session for the undergraduates for managing finance or whatsnot. Well, my simple advice is “Just spend within your means. Don’t compare yourself with others. Don’t care if you are not keeping things updated i.e. having the latest gadgets and whatsnot. Bankruptcy is a burden. Be wise in spending the money that you have”.

Normally, people assume that the salary of a lecturer could enable them to live lavishly. Well, it depends. But for me, what I do since the first salary that I earned back in 1995 is I will save first, before spending. It is a habit that I retain until now. Some ask if I have more than 100k in my bank account. Well, I do not know because I do not keep track of my saving. But what I do know is I save at least 1/3 of what I earn per month. To trick myself to save, I pay myself to do house chores. Sounds funny? Well, I do not have any helper so I pay myself to clean my house RM1k per month. It motivates me to put extra effort to clean my own house (even though I purposely leave my own bedroom a little bit messy for creative mode – I have inspiration to upcycle fabrics and whatsnot when the environment is a bit messy).

Someone told me before that when it comes to what we earn, we have to make sure that we put aside certain amount for sadaqah (without fail). It is really important to have the awareness that what we have is not ours on the first place.

Ada sesi perkongsian penulisan bab 1. Salah seorang pelajar sarjana kongsi poster dalam Telegram. Dengan cepat aku ingatkan, itu untuk pelajar sarjana muda, bukan mereka.

Tapi aku masih berasa janggal sebab aku bukan penyelia projek sarjana muda. Jadi akan wujud jurang yang mencabar proses “transfer of knowledge” berlaku. “Transfer of knowledge” bukan proses bagaimana satu ilmu dialihkan dari seorang ke seorang yang lain. Ianya adalah proses di mana pelajar terlibat dalam proses mempelajari sesuatu perkara yang baru berdasarkan apa yang telah dipelajari sebelum ini. “Transfer of knowledge” boleh berlaku dalam dua keadaan: positif dan negatif.

“Positive transfer” berlaku apabila pelajar dapat mempelajari sesuatu perkara dengan mudah berdasarkan apa yang telah dipelajari sebelum ini. Contoh: Seorang individu belajar memandu kereta dengan menggunakan kereta manual. Apabila individu ini perlu memandu kereta automatik, dia dapat belajar memandu kereta automatik dengan mudah. Ini adalah contoh “positive transfer“.

“Negative transfer” berlaku apabila sesuatu perkara baru yang dipelajari sukar untuk difahami meskipun terdapat perkara lama yang telah dipelajari. Contoh: Ahmad telah belajar nilai nombor 1 lebih kecil berbanding nombor 10 atau 100 (nombor 1 yang diakhiri oleh nombor kosong). Akan tetapi Ahmad mengalami kesukaran untuk memahami nilai matawang Rupiah 1000 yang nilainya lebih kecil dari RM1. Ini adalah contoh “negative transfer“.

Oleh yang demikian, saya melarang pelajar sarjana saya untuk hadir ke sesi yang diadakan untuk pelajar sarjana muda kerana saya bimbang berlaku “negative transfer“. Walaupun selalunya kebarangkalian untuk berlaku “negative transfer” amat kecil tetapi saya tidak mahu mengambil risiko berkenaan.

We were bombarded to give our response in a survey. At first, I just did not pay any attention to that. I just have a quick look and moved on to other things. But, it keeps on appearing on the email and Whatsapp. Then, this made me to stop for a while and closely inspected the survey.

As I was preparing notes for my research methodology class yesterday, something bugged me. I just could not help from thinking about certain things that I know very well are not ethical when conducting research. What makes it unbelievable is the fact that we have abundant professors at the university and yet such unethical aspects are so glaringly happened right in front of our eyes. These highly esteemed professors should be consulted to avoid this kind of things from happening.

I discussed this with few friends. Some said that they refuse to answer the survey regardless of the consequences. I told one of my seniors, I wanted to check out the rest of the items to confirm my hunch. Since there are certain things being forced on us (uhuk uhuk to answer first before moving to the next part), I decided to look at the survey closely.

I answered all of the items but at the same time, I wrote down certain things that I found in the survey about some of the items (unethical things). I discussed this again with my seniors. We agree that something is not right about the survey.

After completing the survey, I wrote an email to the person in charge. My intention is to raise the awareness about certain things that might be overlooked by them. I also gave the person in charge a title of a book that can be referred if they want to know more about research ethics (tongue in cheek remark!).

The title of the book is “100 questions (and answers) about research ethics” by Emily E Anderson dan Amy Corneli (Sage, 2018).  

There was a briefing by Dr Nihra about TESDCP. For teaching track, there are several things that we need to fill in the information (plus document if relevant) at different systems such as ELPPT (B6, B7, B9, B10) and RADIS (B11).

There are rubrics too. Looking at the rubrics make me asking myself, “What are the things that I aim for?” Do I really need to care about being penalised i.e. losing marks for not able to provide evidence of my research in teaching? Well, I take a baby step in this case. Conducting a research relating to my teaching practice involves conscious act of revising, replanning, reevaluting and restructuring (it is cyclical process). I know that as a start I need to share my teaching practice to people outside UTM. For this reason, I make sure that I participate (and present) in a relevant conference or exhibition. I did that in June (IUCEL/IIDEL2021) and October 2021 (IQRC2021).

It is in my plan to publish the findings of my action research. But getting comments and whatsnot from people that I met during conferences, I realise that I need another cycle of data collection. But nevertheless, there will be another upcoming conference in December (INCULT2021) and I am preparing a paper for that.

But by that time, I know that I would have only few days to fill in the ELPPT. Well, I will try my best.

I am not a techno savvy person. But I try my best to learn new things. So, I challenged myself to participate in a virtual conference this year. The first one I attended was in June. IQRC 2021 is my second.

One of the things that I notice is how QRAM (Qualitative Research Association Malaysia) organises the virtual conference. It looks neat and user-friendly. At first I was struggling to navigate the virtual conference venue but as I tried several times, it did help me to “survive” in navigating the venue. I got lost few times but it was alright. A new learning experience for me.

Unlike the conference bag that we usually get with goodies and stuff, this time around, we got a swag bag. The term sounds classy! We can choose to “bag” in the things available such as discount for books, videos and stuff. One of the things that I “bagged” is this video about qualitative research. It is kind of straight forward for students to use. I like the simple yet concise presentation of information. Here is the video.

For the programme book, it is in PDF format. As a reference, here is the programme book.

It is a new semester. So there are few technical glitches that might happen as usual. But I find myself getting emails from students asking about things that they can find on their own by googling up information themselves. With classes, meetings, a workshop and a conference, I got easily annoyed with students who emailed me asking such mundane thingy. Just because they pay the tuition fees, does it give them the right to treat me like an information counter personnel? I wonder where these students come from. Why are they acting like a kindergartener who ask questions that they can find the answer themselves through Google?

Several postgraduate students asked me a list of reading materials. For goodness sake! Some of them are PhD candidates even – who are supposed to be trained as independent researchers. If they depend on me as their supervisor to give them a list of things to read, they should register for my undergraduate courses where I provide a course information with list of reading materials like textbooks and such.

What should I do about this? To relieve stress dealing with these students, I read PhD comics by Jorge Cham. It gives me an idea to contribute to the comic. I think I will email the cartoonist to share my predicament (tongue in cheek remark!)