Saturday 20 October 2012

Half a Semester Later


Half a semester later, I sit in a classroom of mathematical and chemical equations, in a sea of eager students seeking to outdo each other, outlast each other, the environment of learning is lost. It really makes one wonder if the education environment is the pseudo real working life. Perhaps the most discouraging of them all is the projects that I've been handling. Unable to solve the problems myself, I often have to resort to begging others to teach me, intruding on my professors to aid me, and often staying alone in the cold school campus to crack my head at the problems alone - not that my group mates did nothing, it wan't fair of me to demand their company every night till 11pm everyday for 2 weeks. Yes, we took that long to crack the problem.

I truly miss the professional communication classes, it provided me a surreal learning environment that is not an engineering classroom. In ES2007S classes, students always give constructive feedback, become a close-knitted group, learn to express their thoughts and ideas properly in conventional social media (such as blogging), learn survivor skills such as presentation and the elevator pitch; and yet get academic credit for it. It was a really encouraging learning environment for me because I felt that I was being awarded a grade for being willing to try, for being willing to help others. The intangible rewards were very rich as well, it was always a joy to see and communicate with my classmates and my teacher who show genuine concern for issues of communication and of course, my life. Simply put, I miss the classroom environment than a modular system, and I don't understand why can't my present tutorial classes be instructive. Why can't the teacher explain or give other problem examples to cement concepts? Why simply read off the answer key on the screen when I too have the same answer key?

I honestly have no idea why I'm blogging about my epiphany, perhaps I simply miss this module too much. But I know that the only constant in the wheels of time is change, and like all things I'm just going to have to adjust to being in a competitive than a sheltered classroom setting.

Best of luck to everyone in their semester ahead!

Sincerely
Titus

No comments:

Post a Comment