Well it actually started unexpectedly this afternoon. I was actually want to come to do lunch time talk but none of my friends seems to be interested. Actually I want to go out. I just went to the gym and considering the decision hard enough to finally decided that I'm not going. Then it still raining outside, so rather then waiting the rain to stop I decided to attend the lunch time talk and boy did I get surprised that this is one kind of lunchtime talk I need the most.
Well, I can't say thank you enough for the rain that falls today. The rain this time really is bring a blessed day for me. It's not actually the format of the usual lunchtime talk where a source-person talking and question in the end, may be because at first, it just me who attend the lunchtime talk.
I'm not quite surprise though that the talk will be empty. But i thought there will be at least a few people that coming. Well thankfully Justin still patient enough to wait and another 3 student coming and make the four of us. Even though initially I don't want to come, but I do have one unfinished question that I need to address to Justin. It's about what constitutes something as a published work. Yeah and I do get the answer. Even though it's just a blog like this, it constitutes published writing. So f I want to submit some blog as my assignment, he said that it's better if I consult first to the lecturer if it's okay with him. Well now it's better if I wrote my blog not for scientific purpose. Yeah, it's just for fun. If it really is important and I want to use it later, I'll just cite my self. hahaha...
Okay, other than that, this lunchtime talk also got a surprise guest, Mr.Zeger. So it's two against four now. Since the talk in no longer about the Pedagogical Approach (Pe-da-Go-Ji-cal, I can't even pronounce the word correctly), We mostly talk about the curriculum in the school. Then I remembered about the two main problem that I always have in every class.
First, I keep feeling that the lecturer actually have a certain topics to convey, but then some students keep raising their hand, either for questioning or stating their opinion. In the end, I feel like the lecturer is actually unfinished in terms of conveying what he actually has to convey.
Second, it's about when people stating their opinion. I keep feeling like the lecturer is as if saying that, "You're right" to every opinion. In the end, it leaves me confused, which one is the real correct answer or opinion, well at least one opinion must be better than the other.
Well, Justin then addressing my second problem first. He said that, It might be true, no answer is completely wrong, every answer can be right with "it depends". Depends on the circumstances, depends on the culture, depends on the country. So this is actually a good practice for all of us to know different opinion based on country of origin.
What I like about Justin, beside that his accent is much better than the other professor that I've encountered, I feel like he's understand the background of my question. He continues that, he thinks that I'm questioning the issue in terms for the exam. How if in the exam, the question shows up and I'm going to be confused which is the right answer. OMG, Justin... you know me so well....hahaha...
Is it?? now that is actually my deepest fear.
Then Justin said that, if it's the issue, first, think of this is as an experience. There really is no just right or wrong answer. The most important thing is the reason behind that answer. Let say prostitutes in Britain is forbidden, but in Singapore, it is legal in certain area. So both answer legal and illegal is correct. Now it depends on what basis do you use to answer the question. The most important is you can understand the basics from where you derived your answer. Second, it the exam really is worried you, just ask the lecturer about what answer did he really want, because you really need to know what to answer if that question shows up in the exam.
Oh, okay... that's a good one. But then Zeger is trying to address my first issue.
First of all, he said that he's a bit different with Justin. Zeger thinks that it's true, one opinion maybe better than the other. So that's why it is important for a lecturer to manage the class. He must be able to stop a student when his opinion is no longer in context of the topics. It's all about managing the time and class.
And then Justin gives us an example from an experiment.
There are two groups of kids from early primary school and there is a robot that exactly has 10 functions. For the first group, we told them that if you press this button, the robot will make beeping sounds, but for the second group we just show them that the robot can do this and that. The result of the experiment is that the kids in the first group keeps doing the same thing over and over, because it's what taught to them. But in the second group, they actually find 4 out of 10 of the robot's functions.
It shows that if you got spoon-fed of a topic, you'll end up doing the same thing over and over again. But if you try to explore some topic on your own, you'll end up find more about the topics. That may be the basics of some lecturer in this school.
Wow, that is so eye-opening.
Struggle does bring more invention and knowledge. We can learn so much from success, we we can learn so much more from mistakes. So it may be intentional from the lecturer to just gives you clues to solve a problem.
Justin also gives a very good tips and trick to read more effectively, even though he said that this is from Zeger, well at least, he cited it. He said that if a lecturer give you a stack of things to read, try to find questions you want to be answered. Consider it's like you're interviewing and the reading material is your source. You make a set of questions and you try to find the answer in the reading material. Because if you just reading it without knowing what you're looking for, it's like filling a cup with constant water, at some point it'll just pouring out of the glass because the glass is full. Or for easiness, you can ask the lecturer, what point he want us to know from the reading material.
In big picture he also said that we have to question ourselves, what we want to get from this course in support of our goal. Maybe we can take some from this course, some from another course and we try to fill our own jigsaw puzzle of what we want to achieve when we're graduating from this school. So we really have a purpose and during the course we actually start to put pieces by pieces in our pool of knowledge, so we can be more focused rather than just accepting everything in.
This could be the best lunchtime talk I've ever had so far. I do hope you read this Justin, "This talk really is helpful"
Now I hope I can share you the benefit I get from the talk.
This school is a struggling process, but with that struggle, I just hope that all of us can get the best out of it.
Image source:
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