Ir. Ts. Dr. Zaki Yamani Zakaria Official Page
School of Chemical & Energy Engineering, Faculty Engineering, UTM
Finally, I managed to complete another 2 reviews for a conference today. That means I completed 4 conference reviews this weekend (2 yesterday and 2 today). Pheeewwwwhhh!
Now, I am left with 3 journal reviews. I hope and wish that I can complete them by this week.
Agenda for tomorrow
Workshop in the morning
Management Meeting in the afternoon
Plus miscellaneous macro and micro tasks to deal with 🙂
It’s Friday today, our off day. However, due to my hectic daily work, I can only to some of my usual dekstop work today, the off-day. Just completed 1 conference manuscript, few more to be reviewed.
Will post update status soon today.
I have several pre-scheduled tasks for today (as expected after holding this position).
First, made a site visit to the chemical disposal storage which at 9 am, a team of technical staffs will work together to clear and transfer the waste chemicals to another chemical disposal storage area. Basically, we intend to have only one waste chemical storage for easier management and facilitation.
Secondly, there was this Penilaian Teknikal meeting for some items that will be purchased. This was chaired by the Timbalan Dekan Penyelidikan & Inovasi (TDPI). 4 Items were interestingly been reviewed 🙂 .
Thirdly, there was this official visit by Universitas Sriwijaya (UNSRI) to our faculty. Later, I brought the delegation to visit some of our labs. Exactly 5 of the labs. Thanks to the help of Dr. Anam, Jamal, Firdaus, Azri, Roslan, Dr. Wan Rosli, who helped to guide and explained about the labs etc to the Indonesian delegates. Credit to Shahril, our cameraman for the day.
The delegates from UNSRI and part of FCEE Administrators at our FCEE office
Earlier in the morning, the technical staffs worked together (gotong-royong) to clear, clean the previous FCE chemical waste disposal storage area. Great effort, remarkable teamwork.
Subsequently, I had several unofficial meetings with several important people in the faculty – for technology & knowledge transfer, job/task transfer, comprehending many things, a bit planing and a bit of this and that… 🙂
Most importantly, I need to stay relax, calm and not to stress out myself.
Back home, I had a good badminton with my other half and kids 🙂 Need to balance life… work… family… exercise… Majalah 3… and writing this post 😉 then get some rest…
This is indeed a very interesting one. Check it out. What will be your opinion, read here now (warning it is a bit long).
As a lecturer, I faced various occasion that I am not comfortable with when dealing with students in my office room. From my short servicing years and a relatively longer one of my other half, we experienced several unpleasant moment with students, which leads to the compilation of this short article. Before that, let me explain that lecturer welcome students to their office, but the students need to know the etiquettes and limits. We gathered only 9. There may be more spectacular or unbelievable act of students that we do not experience. OK let’s not waste any time. Let’s dive into the 9 things student should not do when meeting lecturer in his/her office room.
1. Entering lecturer’s office room without knocking
This is pure basic polite necessity. When you enter anybody’s room, you must show respect by knocking the door to ask permission to enter the room. No need for rocket scientist brain to think of that.
2. Sitting on the chair without asking permission
What do you do when you attend an interview? When you were called, you enter the room and ask permission to sit in front of the interview panel. It should be similar practice when you meet your lecturer. Ask permission when you want to sit. I still do that when I meet my supervisor in her office, even though I am a lecturer, which simply means we are colleagues.
3. Playing or touching stuffs on lecturer’s table
Please show some respect to your lecturer. You are in his/her office. It must be interesting to be in the office. You see numerous interesting and exciting stuffs such as shiny medals/awards, working files, official letters, confidential documents, photo frames, attractive looking pen, stack of business card, latest gadgets and so on. You have no right to touched all those private items belonging to your lecturer. Just sit still and do just what you are supposed to do with your lecturer. Not touching stuffs.
4. Checking out/trying to see what is displayed on the lecturer’s monitor/laptop (without the lecturer asking to)
It’s annoying. Why you should be so interested in what is displayed? If you are not asked to see the monitor/laptop screen, don’t attempt to do so. If you do so, you are entering your lecturer’s sky zone, and that’s not good. However, if your lecturer ask you to do so, that’s perfectly fine.
5. Texting (SMS) while talking/discussing/consulting in front of the lecturer
This act is so rude, especially when your lecturer is showing you something or is looking at you, who require eye contact, you deviate your focus and attention towards your hand phone, replying SMS. Please don’t do this, or you won’t get your lecturer’s attention anymore after this.
6. Answering phone call while talking/discussing/consulting in front of the lecturer
Who is more important? You or your lecturer? Does your lecturer need you? Or you need your lecturer? Should the lecturer wait and listen to your telephone conversation? This behaviour is just like the previous one. You should show more respect. Silence your hand phone and focus on your consultation with your lecturer.
7. Meeting the lecturer unprepared
I believe it is not easy to meet your lecturer. They are very busy person with various tasks to perform, in and outside the office. So, when you managed to meet your lecturer, please make full use of the chance. You may want to ask something or consult your research direction (if you are a master or Ph.D student). Make sure you bring all the required information that can support the discussion and analysis. Don’t come unprepared. Come with full preparation.
8. Not knowing when to leave the office room
You are at your lecturer’s room. You have got the answer to your subject or research problem. However, you decided to stay longer, acting casual, wanting to chit chat with your lecturer. It is fine to have a brief mingle session. However, you need to know your limit. As stated earlier, your lecturer is a very busy person, with journal papers to write/edit, not to mention other countless KPI to accomplish. So, don’t take more time than required in your lecturer’s room. Know when you should leave.
9. Meeting lecturer nagging / begging for additional marks
Oh no… don’t do this. You should have prepared extremely well for your examination and test. When the marks are released and you get shocked starring at some numbers which you think you do not deserve, you frantically ramp into your lecturer’s office and begin the begging process, asking for that tiny little marks with just one reason, to improve your grade from C to B or from B to A and so on.
Perhaps other points lecturers or students would like to share?
William is a master student from Kenya. I first met him when I was lecturing Plant and Chemical Safety for Masters. He is also an academic staff from a university in Kenya.
Fast forward to yesterday (28th july 2016), I was his examiner for his Chemical Engineering Master Dissertation. It should be a fast Master defense examination since he is in the Chemical Engineering Mixed-Mode program. However, the examination was stretched to 3 hours. That’s quite long for a Mixed-Mode program. It was not because the quality of work that is not good. It is in fact due to the fact that he has done SO MUCH WORK, and presented such a huge amount of result in his dissertation. All of us thought that he has done a work almost similar to a full time master student or even more than a full time master student. If he add few more elements into his work, it can be a Ph.D quality.
From left: Dr. Arif, Dr. Tahir, William, Dr. Ramli & me
I can just say WELL DONE! You should continue to do your Ph.D. Keep up the good work.
Today, we were lucky to host Assoc. Prof. Ir. Dr. Didi Dwi Anggoro, my colleague from Universiti Diponogoro (UNDIP), Semarang, Indonesia (and his family). He was in Johor since yesterday for his daughter’s convocation in Marsah, Johor Bahru. It’s not his (and his family) first visit to our humble house. They have been here in several occasions for the past few years.
Who is Didi Dwi Anggoro?
He is a very nice friendly guy whom which when I was doing my Chemical Engineering Masters Degree, he did his Ph.D. We were in the same research group – Chemical Reaction Engineering Group (CREG). We were both supervised by Dr. Nor Aishah Saidina Amin (Now Prof. Nor Aishah Saidina Amin @ Prof NASA). That era which we were in was betweeen 1999 – 2003. His research areas are applied catalysis, reaction engineering and biofuel.
Some info about Assoc. Prof. Ir. Dr. Didi Dwi Anggoro : Click here.
After the first game versus Bendahari, we fought Perpustakaan team. In this game, I partnered Ahmad MPRC again as FCEE first double. We played first. Followed by single (Dr. Nazri) and finally second double (Dr. Lau and Be Cheer).
Result…
We won all game 3-0.
All games were won with straight set. Unbelievable. Unstoppable. We emerged as champion for group C.
We will proceed to the next round, but this time it will be tougher. The game will be tonight. Let’s pray and hope for the best. Go FCEE!!!
Besides being in the faculty’s football team for this year’s Staff Inter-Department Game, I am also in the faculty’s badminton team. This year, we were drawn in the same group as Bendahari and Perpustakaan. Tonight we were arranged to battle Bendahari. Luckily the format has been changed from 3 doubles & 2 singles to 2 doubles & 1 single. This is mainly due to lack of players available. I played alongside Ahmad MPRC (Gastech) as the second double team for tonight.
The result…
FKT (FCEE) won 3-0 against Bendahari 🙂
A sweet victory!
Tomorrow we are going to fight Perpustakaan. Hopefully we will repeat our success. Go FKT!!!
For those who are not aware of the endless job scope of a lecturer / academician / researcher / consultant etc, we have one interesting yet challenging task. It is journal review. Since we are an expert in certain specific field of research, there will be time where we will be invited to review manuscripts that are submitted to certain journals. I have been doing this activity of journal review since I was a Ph.D student. But after Ph.D, I received more and more invitation to review journal manuscript. But wait… The number of journal that I review are not as much as our professors have to review. Roughly, I am reviewing around 5 to 10 journals a year (since 2013). I am expecting to receive more and more invitation. However, that’s nothing compared to professors who review more than 100 journal manuscript per year.
Is it tough?
Depends.
Sometimes, when we are hectic, we hardly have time to read and comprehend the content of the manuscript to be reviewed. However, when we have some piece of extra time to spend reading this manuscript, we can complete the review faster. There were moments where I managed to complete a review in 1 day. There are also moments where I took 3-4 weeks to complete a review. There was 1 review that I remembered not completing it at all.
Reward?
This is not a paid job. It is just for us to help and contribute to review and help to decide if a manuscript is worth publishing or not. However, it is required and counted in our KPI (Key Performance Index) or KAI (Key Amal Index)… as UTM called it now. The more we reviews we make, the more points get counted for our performance evaluation every each end of the year. Another way of looking at it, is the journal editors recognizes our expertise and credibility, and due to that, they invited us to review the manuscript. So, although it is not a paid task or project, academicians like me still do the review for the reasons above.
180 degree opposite opinion
I know some colleagues who does not like the idea. Why you are doing this and not getting paid? Why you are letting them manipulating your intellectuality? Why are you giving them a service for free? “Them” here refers to the publisher of the journals. I am not against my colleague’s idea NOR I am backing up this big journal publisher. At the moment, I am just doing what I am suppose to do as an academician and researcher. I am trying to do the best that I can for the best of the scientific advancement of knowledge. Somehow, I feel that experts like us should be rewarded and not let to do a free service.
What do you think?
I would like to see your opinions and the comment section below 🙂
