Hadijah binti Jaffri

I know about its existence last year (2018) when I did my Latihan Ikhtisas.  I have no issue about its existence and whatever posts that people write.  A similar kind of blog such as IIUMconfession has existed few years back earlier.  For IIUMconfession, most of the times, the students or former students of IIUM would write about their experience learning and studying at IIUM.  When they talk about former lecturers, even though some of the lecturers are well-known as “killer lecturers”, they would write something positive about those killer lecturers.  They talk about the values they learn from them.  [Note: There are also non-IIUM students or former students who post their thoughts at IIUMconfession 😀 ]

UTMconfession?  It is totally a different game.  Some might say that I am bias because I didn’t graduate from UTM.  But the way I see it, UTMconfession has become a place where students defame, malign, slander (you name it) either the university where they go or went to study i.e. UTM or the people who teach or taught them or anyone that they have encountered for various purposes.  Don’t get me wrong.  There are some positive uplifting posts by various individuals (who are mostly students or former students) too.  

I am not saying that one could or should not give bad comments on the institution i.e. UTM or its staff (academics or non-academics), but from the way I see it, majority of the bad comments are baseless.  Only few can be considered as genuine cases that worth to be taken into consideration.  

For example, if you get failing marks, rather than just go straight away to “attack” the person who teaches you, please have self-reflection first.  Why do you get such marks on a first place?  Most of the time (99.9%) it is due to students’ effort.  As university students, it is not about judging how other people teach you, but rather judging how you learn from this person who teaches you.  Capisce?  

You might say that “Well, even though he/she has a PhD, but still he/she is a lousy lecturer“.  I do admit that some of my colleagues might not emphasize on their teaching, rather than research but they are the “minuscule organism” at this university.  Majority of us are passionate educators.  Every semester during semester break especially, some of us attend workshops/training etc. to improve our teaching strategies.  Some of us take the effort to change or adjust certain things that we normally do in class.  To have a fresher style, we go extra miles to keep ourselves updated with the latest development in teaching and learning.  All of these take efforts and time.  Students don’t see the behind-the-scene things. 

Do they know that we have to juggle with so many things other than teaching?  Do they know that whatever things that we do in class will be evaluated, audited and monitored?  So, when you guys give “lousy evaluation” on our ePPP, sometimes it does make others to raise questions about what and how we teach in class.  This is especially if we are teaching different sections, and one section give us good rating about our teaching and another section give us bad rating.  We are the same.  How can we get two different ratings?  It is you guys, students who have different perceptions about us.  It’s ok.  We are not stopping you from giving us bad evaluation if you feel dissatisfied with us.  You are human being with feelings so, it is your right to let your emotion known to us.  But you have to do it with hikmah (wisdom).  That’s something that you need to learn.  

Note: If you are dissatisfied with the university or the lecturer who teaches/taught you, please use proper channel.  Don’t use UTMConfession with the hope that anyone that you think has nothing better to do than to entertain your slandering complaint would read it.  Do you think that by posting such thing would change the situation according to what you wish?  It might backfire you instead.