Category University Life

First week of lectures, done!

Rachel Tan HX 5 Comments

“Make some noise!”

Mr Yeo* (name changed), my math lecturer, said after a while, when no one was willing to turn on their cam (camera) and an awkward silence followed his questions. “I want to hear your voices, to make sure you’re still alive.” I checked to make sure my mic was muted, and laughed out loud. That is totally not the typical thing your lecturer would say in a classroom.

But there was more. “Remember, you can eat or drink during your lectures,” he said, not even an inch of mischief in his voice. He said it matter-of-factly, like it were printed rules from the university code of conduct rule book. “And please, you can go to the toilet without my permission.” I heard someone cough, then a laugh come from my speakers.

What weirdness.

In a blink of an eye, I have already attended a whole week of university lectures!

The first week started off quietly, but it has begun swiftly nevertheless, and I did not even have the time to write a first day of university blogpost for you! 😛

From what I can gather from my lecturers, things will really pick up its pace from week two onwards. Ready your engines… it’s going to be a one-year spurt, charging head on toward the defining moment where I may or may not meet the requirements for my medical degree.

My online lectures are being conducted on Microsoft Teams, a tight-knit community platform which can be used by school or work accounts. Due to the COVID crisis, our university will be conducting online live stream learning for the rest of the semester. All our assignment documents and online class schedules are easily accessible through this special platform.

This week has been a busy yet fun one, as I tried to adapt to balancing lectures and the daily sessions with my father as he tried to guide me with my foundation syllabus. Having two parties trying to occupy your time and teach you, in their respective ways, is not easy to handle. But I have been managing it so far, whilst having fun, enjoying myself and learning new things. I hope to return to campus soon after this COVID situation improves, as I am quite eager to experience campus life!

“We have such a pretty teacher!” A student gushed during our first cell biology lecture class, right below our teacher’s nose – or, to be more precise, right below our teacher’s screen.

“Hahahahaha….” our teacher, Ms Nadiah (name changed), laughed loudly. She found this student so amusing. “Some of the students here are retaking the paper,” she explained to about a hundred of us, listening behind our screens in our own homes. Clink! The sound of a coffee cup was heard… this was probably a shared house for online teaching that the lecturers were sharing, or this could perhaps even be on campus grounds.

Suddenly, Ms Nadiah’s face turned serious. “My line… is lagging a bit ah! I might have to turn off my cam.” She was even so nice as to ask us if it was alright for her to turn off her camera, despite ALL ONE HUNDRED of us having our cameras disabled. No one wanted to show their face.

“Never mind lah, teacher,” said one student, safe behind a disabled camera. “All we need is to see your face.”

Still, online learning is not very much less of an experience. Your hair is messy and you’re still munching on the last of your breakfast. There is the new normal that constitutes an “e-classroom”, where your mom slides open your door every once in a while, and your dad barges in to listen to your lectures, out of curiosity, every ten minutes.

Your new excuse for being late to class is a bad internet connection…. and no one can really blame you for that. If you’re shy to answer a question in class, you can say your mic is not working, and type in the chat box instead. Most the time when you speak, your profile icon pulses, which can be set to a default blank image with your initials in bold on it. But sometimes it doesn’t even pulse, which means you can ask a question without fear of being judged; no one, not even the lecturer will know who you are. You can change the tone of your voice to avoid being recognized by voice; if anyone is even as observant as that.

Of course, I haven’t actually done any of that. This is my chance to gradually ease my way into uni, so I don’t want to let online learning get me too comfortable. Throughout the week I kept trying to push myself out of my own comfort zone, ask some questions, use the ‘raise hand’ function. It’s healthy, it’s good practice, for introverts like you and me (if you’re one). If you’re wondering, I’m actually an introvert in real life. However, I am very verbal and confident online. I am comfortable expressing myself through written or typed out words where I can backspace and prepare.

The workload for the first week has been quite light, though I am sure it will increase sharply in the coming weeks. The chemistry and physics questions mostly touch on the basics, topics we have learnt about in form 5 during our preparation for SPM, but just a few months of not studying has caused out minds to become rusty, and I have forgotten even how to solve the most basic mole ratio questions. Well… not to say forgotten, but perhaps I have to get used to the concepts and formulas I used to remember for SPM again.

I have printed out some of my notes for all the courses I am taking this semester, namely Chemistry, Physics, Biology, English and Math; all of which are either very neatly prepared or very colourful and full of comprehensive diagrams to facilitate fun and effective learning. I have begun to do some self-studying and find it quite fun and interesting! Some of our lecturers are also very nice and helpful, using Kahoot, a simple online multiplayer game, to engage with us; or telling jokes once in a while to brighten up the mood, or telling us not to panic about the assignment deadline on week 7, since they will remind us again when the date approaches. Still they never fail to bring the focus back to lessons, which is what makes them such great lecturers.

In the middle of the week, while browsing through my countless Microsoft Teams groups meant for different classes, I was shocked to find that I had actually missed a class on Monday. It was the first practical class for Physical Chemistry! My student portal stated flat out in red BLOCK LETTERS that I did not have any records of attendance for Monday, 1st of June 2020.

Oh dear. Very luckily, online learning gives us the ability to go back and watch the replay! Of course, the attendance record cannot be changed. I squeezed the time to watch this replay in the midst of the other lectures I already have for Wednesday, which made my eyes hurt quite a bit, as I am not used to sitting in front of the computer for long hours. However e-learning is like that, and I should learn to get used to it.

One thing I have done quite a lot throughout the week is also… guess what? Yeah 😛 Printing my lecture notes and tutorial questions. They come in bulk! I say, the best way to stay fit during MCO is running up and down the stairs to print your lecture notes. Really.

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To date, I have collected quite a lot of lecture topics, neatly in files, and have begun to prepare ahead a bit before everything starts picking up its pace. I never thought I would get to say this before the rush begins, but shockingly, at this very point of time, only SOME HOURS before the second week of lectures begins, I can tell you that the pace has NOT picked up yet. (Whoa. Unbelievable.) (No. I’m just joking.) This statement could possibly be true only for a few more hours… or maybe a couple more days, not sure yet. We’ll see.

For now, I need to get back to learning how to draw a glucose molecule.

You know, drawing glucose is definitely more fun that I had imagined! Especially when your lecturer guides you slowly in learning the steps, and describes the how the actual structure of a glucose molecule really is.

My Foundation Year Begins Tomorrow!

Rachel Tan HX 2 Comments

Hey everyone!

My foundation programme at university will begin tomorrow! I am so excited 😀

For the past week I have been binge watching – not Netflix films, not Astro, and not Youtube, but the live sessions on various topics organized by my university. Over the past week, my university has organized many live sessions. Other than the formal academic briefings and formal welcome by the university principal, there were also live talks on culture and ethics, real estate investing, creative writing, 5G and AI, all of which I took some notes down and thoroughly enjoyed myself. There were even talks by the university alumni, many of which were now staying and working overseas, or have started their own business or are working for large corporations.

Since I had never experienced live sessions on a large scale before, consisting of many university students and faculty lecturers or alumni, it was quite fun to attend these virtual meetings, while playing around with the control buttons in the video conferencing apps and the mic connected to the computer, to promote my smooth transition into the online lectures that would commence in two days time. Although I am still disappointed that I have missed all the fun of participating in my university orientation day, and the games and fun we could have had in real life were it not for the Covid 19 pandemic, this is also very much a unique experience.

My online lectures are going to be conducted on Microsoft Teams, which I have gotten reasonably accustomed to using by attending the various talks we’ve had this week. Microsoft Teams is a highly integrated and very useful live video conferencing and office 365 (word, excel, powerpoint etc) document syncing platform that our university has already paid for to have full access to all of its features. From what I know, Sunway College & University, a premium city campus in Malaysia, uses Microsoft Teams as well!

As I have mentioned above, with the commencement of my foundation course leading to my chosen MBBS degree, these online lectures will commence tomorrow! I have been taking this time to scrutinize my student portal and e-learning website, which we have been advised to check regularly for announcements and assignment updates. I have saved my lecture timetable and class plans to my favourites bar at the top of my browser for easy access.

Now……

It’s 1.16 am, I am a tired teenager and need to get some sleep. 😛 I will check out my lecture notes in the morning, and maybe prepare some empty notebooks for note taking!

College study tips: Is it easier to remember, or to forget?

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Credits: Pixabay

Remembering, the bane of all doctors and a highly significant contributor to their success in medical school and beyond.

How often do you try to recall something, only to realize the memory is already long faded and too late to trace back? Even worse, sometimes it feels as if it’s at the tip of your mind and you just. Can’t. Remember.

How often do you make silly mistakes, or do your brain cells feel completely drained, as you struggle to remember?

It certainly must be more difficult to remember.

But is it really?

Say I give you a polynomial equation: 9x^5/9+6x^4/2+x^3/5+7x^2/4+9x+8 = 0, and I ask you to memorize and repeat it back to me in five seconds. Then I ask you to try and forget a formula you’ve known from before – say the root-finding quadratic formula, in five seconds.

Does that first polynomial equation look easy to digest at all? Yet try as you might, you will find it ironically easier to memorize at least partially that polynomial jargon than trying to forget the quadratic formula that you have learnt before.

I am sure the concept of the above paragraph is nothing new to you. However, I am trying to put into concise terms to explain why we cannot give a blanket (general) answer to the question: “is it easier to remember or to forget”. We don’t remember things better just because it’s shorter and less complicated. It also depends on period of exposure – in other words, how long you’ve known it.

We are only human and are not able to over-compromise sleep or take in more knowledge than we possibly can a day. To excel in life, we must make connections with the things we learn. In this case, the transferable skill here is applying what you’ve learnt about memory from this blogpost to your study strategy!

It is learning to expose yourself, regularly but at the appropriate time, to the information you need to absorb. This is done through the well-known method called “spatial recollection“.

Spatial recollection is a scientifically proven method of recalling information through a series of carefully timed re-viewing of the information you need to absorb. It is said that when you’re trying to memorize something, you need to read and reread it the most times in the beginning, then once a week, then once a month perhaps. The neurons in our brains somehow process information in this manner.

Therefore in the beginning, it is crucial to pick your material up and go through it more than once at least. After that, your brain has a stronger hold on the information and it becomes less likely that you will forget it.

I have tried this method and found that it works greatly for me. Try this out in your study strategy, and I’m sure it will do wonders for you!

Just got my university online lecture notes!

Rachel Tan HX 2 Comments

Just checked our university’s e-learning website and some of the notes (all of them are in powerpoint presentation form) are ALREADY UP! I am not sure whether these are our main notes, or just for casual reading, but it is something, for sure.

Update on 28th of January 2021: Those were not our main notes, they were old notes just for our reference.

I have printed some out to start studying already. MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) is one of the most rigorous courses, and to achieve AND maintain a CGPA of 3.5 in foundation leading to the degree course, the minimum requirement to enter our institution’s MBBS degree course, I absolutely have to get going!

I would like to repeat again that although this blog is meant for everyone, its main purpose is to be a guide, or simply a companion, for my peer and future-generation friends who are looking to pursue medicine as a career. Through this blog, I also hope to connect with you and would love to be friends. You can find me at Instagram (@racheltan_hx).

As of now, our e-learning environment has put up lecture notes in the form of presentation slides, along with some videos for certain chapters, and quizzes to test our knowledge. It has a very simple user interface (layout and design). However, I still find exploring the student portal, e-learning platform etc interesting.

I must remind you that I have only just attended my e-orientation, and the commencement date for the foundation programs is later in June; however fret not! I have signed up for some online talks, hosted by my university as a welcoming for new university students. Still, there has been no instructions to read the notes in the student portal, and there have been no lectures at all yet.

I am currently still unsure how we will be informed when there will be a online lecture; but I will cross the bridge when I come to it 😉

For now, I shall check some of the notes out. There is already a lot of content on the e-learning platform. Cell Biology, here I come!

~Rachel Tan, Blog author, 16 May 2020.

University E-orientation!

Rachel Tan HX 1 Comment

Hey guys! Recently, I went for my university orientation. It’s my first day at university!…. I clapped, looking at a corporate video of my new campus.

Dad jokingly said that from today onward, I was already a university student, but I said no. I think I would much prefer remembering the date where my lectures commenced, not when I started orientation…. especially because this e-orientation certainly paled in comparison to a conventional face-to-face orientation, where we could hear the unfamiliar voices, see the new faces, and wiggle about as we sat cross-legged on the floor, or on plastic chairs (I don’t know, can’t imagine it.) There would have been laughs and fun. Now, I am forced to ingest all this information, including university rules, online e-learning platforms, co-curricular activities, settling of admission and academic documents, student bill, student ID card and way more within a short period of time. The numerous departments in a university is also unbelievable, to me at least.

The E-orientation did not contain the live video chats or live forums as I had hoped for, but it is still really interesting. After watching the videos of welcome speeches from the university president and students, I logged into the e-orientation portal with my email ID.

How terribly clever! At the end of the page, there was a quiz that asked you questions regarding certain content from the whole e-orientation homepage and portal. Now I will have to go back and read it thoroughly…. while taking note of what the university wants us new students to take note of. I clicked on the e-handbook for freshmen link, and made sure I paid more attention as I read the information in the handbook. With specific information to look out for, it made reading the content just a little bit more fun. I actually started enjoying myself a bit, as I scoured and dug around for the information I needed! :b

The university has listed on its website the pages/accounts that new students should be checking every once in a while, since there will either be announcements or coursework issued through these portals. I have saved all four of them in a folder in the favourites bar on my computer.

Today, I’d just realized that some of our lecture presentation notes are already up (for now, I don’t know if that is all the notes we have or if they are just for casual reading, since all of them are in powerpoint form), and there’s still a lot more to check out on the e-orientation page: videos to watch, pages to read, talks to sign up for etc. Really, when you’re in the middle of it all, it can be a bit tiring; but I learn to have fun along the way. In all, it truly is quite exciting.

And… the floor plan of the university building. It’s not a big university, quite small in fact compared to University Malaya who has a large campus spanning many kilometers; but still. Dear me.

I may just get lost! :b

At this point of lockdown, though, I would rather be lost in a campus then be stuck at home.