CH`NG JIA YI (MIC190006)

GIG1005 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

REFLECTIVE WRITING

A VISIT TO SMK LEMBAH SUBANG

CH`NG JIA YI (MIC190006) DATE: 13 MARCH 2020

I never thought that I still have a chance to go back school and cherish the good old days after I graduated from my secondary school but as Joel Osteen saying goes “don't focus on the good old days, look forward towards the good new days,” and now we had a golden opportunity to relive those precious moments as we are going to a secondary school for our Social Engagement activities. I am so excited when I heard we are going to SMK Lembah Subang to meet those secondary students and impart the knowledge about DNA to them. 

At the end of our first semester in Year One, we are so surprised when Dr Puah reached out to us to introduce this course, Social Engagement. In the beginning, I was very confused about this course and I was at a loss for what I should do in this course but with Dr Puah’s patience and her follow up emails along, I was able to catch up with the flow of this course. We are so glad to have Dr Puah as Dr Puah already planned which school we are going and what activities should we carry on. We are divided into two group among our first year students to go to two different secondary schools which are SMK Lembah Subang and SMK Sri Pantai. As I am in Year One Group One, I had assigned to go to SMK Lembah Subang to carry out activities about DNA extraction and DNA fingerprinting. 

During the semester break, Dr Puah keep updating us with the planning of our visit through emails. We also started to prepare the presentation slides, quizzes and survey form during our semester break. For presentation slides, our group were making effort on Module 1 which is “Microbes and Hygiene” but we are using Module 3 and 4 which are “The Secret of Life: DNA” and “DNA Fingerprinting Lab”. The reason why we are not preparing our own slides is because Dr Puah wanted us to make this Social Engagement activities as a teamwork and Dr Puah tried to involve us in different modules so we can learn as much as we could. In addition, we also prepared gifts for the quizzes’ winners. 

On 6 March 2020 and 13 March 2020, it was our first and second day to visit SMK Lembah Subang. On both days of visit, we set off at 8 in the morning and went there by e-hailing services such as Grab and MyCar. We gathered in the school canteen and our leader, Adlina gave us a short briefing before we went in the laboratory to meet the Form 4 students. On the first day of our visit, we were using Module 3, “The Secret of Life: DNA”. We begin by introducing ourselves to the students and then carried on with our presentation. After presentation, we moved to DNA extraction experiment by using household materials such as salt, detergent and alcohol to extract DNA from human cheek cells and from fruits like banana and papaya. Next, we have our quiz session whereby everyone was so excited to answer the questions. At last, we had photo session.

On the second day of our visit to SMK Lembah Subang which is on 13 March 2020, we had our seminar about “DNA Fingerprinting Lab” and our hands-on activity which is to find out which DNA matches to the crime scene DNA who steal the cheese by doing gel electrophoresis. To wrap up, we had quiz and photo sessions. I have added our group members’ Instagram to send them the photo we taken and for future connections. I am so delighted that we are living in the era of new technology so that even though our visit ended, we still can communicate with each other.

Although our activity ended for many days, I can still recall the scenes with students at SMK Lembah Subang and the joy we enjoyed together those two days. The students there are so cute and so social able. We had so much fun on the two days and I think it will be unforgettable memory for me. I felt appreciated to join these meaningful activities and the experience is fruitful. I can feel the bonding between our batchmates also strengthen a lot after we accomplished this Social Engagement activities together. I truly hope that we have more chances to involve ourselves in these kinds of activity so that we can gain more experience and we can be more concern about our society development.

(757 words)