The recent uproar among UTM students and alike with regards to the increased of study fees was astounding. Looking at various posts on UTM confession about this issue, I feel sad. As an academician, I can’t make any statement on the university policy. Well, they have the corporate office to give official statement on this. You can find it HERE.
Today is my session (1 August 2019). My session should begin at 830am. But the students came at 9am. I was mad. They took their own sweet time to have breakfast. Ita apologised because she did not forcefully urge the students to be quick. What is wrong with this situation? Why did the teacher has to apologise on the behalf of students? I hate to deal with situation like this because the ones who should apologise are the students who came late. Not the teacher who is in charge of the programme.
I met Fatin who was participating in a team building programme with the TNCPI office during lunch. Fatin must be amused looking at how I was flocking by students who chatted non-stop about what they like about the camp. What they liked about the camp? Well, they got a smartphone courtesy of the hotel in each room. So? What do you expect? Yes. They stayed up late and got busied updating their Insta post. They also said that it is quite rare for them to have opportunity to stay overnight at a hotel. Some of them belong to B40 families. Indeed it is such a rare opportunity for them. Alhamdulillah the hotel gave them a good deal. They have printed logo and signage in each seminar room. So, students took pictures and whatsnot. Me? I took pictures for documentation purposes.
Today (31 July 2019, Wednesday) is the first day of the academic camp. My session will start tomorrow (1 August 2019, Thursday). But I came today because I want to check out the venue and Ita asked me to help her taking pictures for documentation purposes. Since they cannot use DSLR camera, we are relying on each other’s effort to take pictures throughout the sessions by taking turn using our smartphones instead. Here are some of the pictures.
Just to remind myself on how to use this website, I put the instructions here for my reference and others who might need it
How to edit the page
How to edit a post.
If you want to know more information, you can download some handouts from here https://humanities.utm.my/education/download/
Go to Webometrics UTM and check out the handouts to know more about it!
P.S: No more excuse not to update your personal profile 😛
Be barking up the wrong tree means to be wrong about the reason for something or to be wrong in the way to achieve something. That is what I can describe about how the students deal with the issue of revised fees.
She was in coma for nearly three weeks. I visited her with my eldest sister two weeks ago. I took a leave on a weekday and off we went to visit her. She was immobile. Unmoved. As I hold her hand, she did not make any reaction. At that time, it reminds me of my late dad. He was in similar situation. The only difference was he was at the hospital and my aunt is at her home. Both suffered brain hemorrhage due to a fall. With such an advanced age (my dad was 75 years old and my aunt was 85 years old), they were physically fragile. A mere bump and fall could lead to catastrophic consequences.
As caregivers, it is not easy to provide the best care especially if we are not medically trained. One of my cousins, my aunt’s daughter is a retired nurse. She is trained medically to provide medical care to people yet when it comes to caring her own parents, she finds it difficult to care for them. It is not due to lack of training, but due to emotional burden that she feels every time seeing her mom or dad whimpering when they were in pain. Indeed. It is never easy to care for our ailing parents.
On 30 July 2019 at around 10pm, my aunt passed away. May Allah bless her soul.
“Sooner Or Later” by Alan Parsons
Oh what a price we pay
For the things we say
And the closer I get to you
The further you move away
All the lies we tell
In the games we play
And the longer I think it over
The harder it is to stay
Sooner or later I’ll be free
To leave the past behind
Sooner or later you’re gonna be
The last thing on my mind
Little by little I’m finding out
The truth behind your eyes
Maybe if I don’t show
I thought you might like to know
You’re gonna be the last thing on my mind
You didn’t want to know
I could have told you so
But the moment I think it’s over
The further there is to go
Just a little word
Such an easy way
But the longer I think about it
The harder it is to say
Sooner or later I’ll be free
To leave the past behind
Sooner or later you’re gonna be
The last thing on my mind
Little by little I’m finding out
The truth behind your eyes
Maybe if I don’t show
I thought you might like to know
You’re gonna be the last thing on my mind
This is the song by Alan Parsons. This is a breakup song. Indeed. Well, my intention was not to teach the students to be romantic. It is far from it. But as teenagers, they need to learn how to regulate their emotions such as handling with rejection, break up and whatsnot. To motivate them to learn English is not easy. Song is one of the ways to teach which is widely used. There are numerous research done this. One of the examples is by a team of researchers from Turkey.
I have not yet conducted any research on this issue. Last year, when I was undergoing my Latihan Ikhtisas, I had contemplated this though. Since I only taught one class for one form, i Ikhtisas, I had contemplated this issue. Since I only taught a single class for a single form, it was difficult for me to “perform” quasi-experiments. I was specifically assigned pupils with limited English skills. Therefore, it is comprehensible why the other class had higher grades than mine, despite the fact that my instructor never used songs in the classroom. The students become more receptive to my teaching style, that much is certain. Some of them are in under my special care until end of the year.
