Mohamad Amir Hamzah Bin Mohd Azahar (MIC180016)
GIG1005 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
REFLECTIVE ESSAY
Mohamad Amir Hamzah Bin Mohd Azahar (MIC180016), 8th April 2020
Since I was a high school, studies in the field of genetics has always piqued my interest and now that I have the chance to study deeper about it in my degree, nothing makes me happier. Through this Social Engagement activity, I was able to share what I have learnt to high school students, in which I wish that I do have the same opportunity as they do, to be given exposure on genetics when I was in high school. However, I do find studying can be hard too, as it requires you to be highly imaginative too in order to understand the concepts. Realising this, our lecturers have their own way to be creative too in order to teach us such as conducting hands on activities. An unforgettable memory from the activities is when we arranged stones in parallel to mimic DNA strands so that we can visualize them better. And we are doing the same thing during our Social Engagement activity, sharing knowledge via fun activities.
It all started in our semester 3 when Dr Puah Suat Moi briefed us on the course. At first, I was sceptical as we are going to conduct this programme with our juniors as I expected that we will have different opinions on certain matter, in which I was proved wrong. But more on that later. We can get along, as long we choose to understand each other. As the semester break begins, Dr Puah made sure to contact us via emails to keep us updated on what we must do and understand our responsibilities for this programme. However, our first internal workshop was cancelled due to COVID-19 outbreak as the university suspended the first week of lecture. I was worried about our preparation since my group is the group that will be conducting the activity for our first meeting at SMK(P) Sri Aman.
It was a rainy Wednesday evening on 26th February, for our first ever internal workshop on DNA Extraction. Despite I have conducted this extraction activity in a subject that I took last semester, I am still interested as we are going to conduct it using household items such as dishwash liquid and salt. Dr Puah was assisted by her four PhD students who are very helpful to guide us throughout the activity and happily entertained our questions. Even though it was tiring, seeing the passion from Dr Puah and the joy from my friends eased my feelings. I was appointed as head of logistics for our group and was responsible for buying presents for our quiz session. I still remember the clear sky on the Sunday night that we decided to buy the presents. Although it was not much, I hope that our presents can make them happy and able to pique their interest in genetics.
Friday, 28th February was the D-Day. We went to SMK(P) Sri Aman at noon right after we finished our Molecular Techniques and arrived roughly at 12.20 p.m. As I was the first group that arrived at the school, we went to setup the hall straight away as we know that time might not be on our side. Since we are not familiar with the sound system, we managed to get help from one of the students and I am surprised on how she did it. A little of MacGyver style if you ask me. At 1 p.m. we started the activity right away by briefing them about our activity for today and teaching them the basics of DNA in the terms that they’ll hopefully can understand at their level. The students are very attentive and interested to listen to the briefing. Soon we had our break and I was responsible to conduct hands on activity at 2 p.m. However, since the Friday prayer took a bit of my time, I arrived late to the school and had difficulties to find the lab, thus my friend took over the session for me. I was a bit disappointed in myself as I was not able to run the activity as I planned. However, we must carry on with the activity. Things began to go downhill from here during the quiz session as the slide were made by the Year 1 students, and (our fault) we did not go through with the slides and this caused some errors and mistakes during the quiz. I felt a mountain of disappointment in myself as I know that we can be better. But due to the lack of preparation time from our group, we let down the teachers, lecturers, our friends and even the students who are very passionate and competent during the quiz. This taught me that a thorough preparations should be made before a programme and we need everyone to work together for this.
We finished the quiz at 4.00 p.m. and said our goodbyes. Then we had a quick post-mortem with our lecturers, Dr Puah and Dr Chai. We admitted in our fault for not being thorough in our work process and promised to improve in our next session. We then took pictures with everyone before heading back. Even though the programme was tiring, plus the let downs, I was happy that we had cooperative friends who are willing to help us when we need help, helpful teachers from SMK(P) Sri Aman and of course our dedicated course coordinator, Dr Puah Suat Moi. I still feel bad for messing up because I know that we can be better but due to insufficient time to prepare and poor cooperation from the members from our group, we made our mistakes. However, I do look forward towards more activity like this as I can contribute to the society and spread knowledge that I have learnt and apply it through our hands-on activities. (964 words)
REFLECTIVE ESSAY
Mohamad Amir Hamzah Bin Mohd Azahar (MIC180016), 8th April 2020
Since I was a high school, studies in the field of genetics has always piqued my interest and now that I have the chance to study deeper about it in my degree, nothing makes me happier. Through this Social Engagement activity, I was able to share what I have learnt to high school students, in which I wish that I do have the same opportunity as they do, to be given exposure on genetics when I was in high school. However, I do find studying can be hard too, as it requires you to be highly imaginative too in order to understand the concepts. Realising this, our lecturers have their own way to be creative too in order to teach us such as conducting hands on activities. An unforgettable memory from the activities is when we arranged stones in parallel to mimic DNA strands so that we can visualize them better. And we are doing the same thing during our Social Engagement activity, sharing knowledge via fun activities.
It all started in our semester 3 when Dr Puah Suat Moi briefed us on the course. At first, I was sceptical as we are going to conduct this programme with our juniors as I expected that we will have different opinions on certain matter, in which I was proved wrong. But more on that later. We can get along, as long we choose to understand each other. As the semester break begins, Dr Puah made sure to contact us via emails to keep us updated on what we must do and understand our responsibilities for this programme. However, our first internal workshop was cancelled due to COVID-19 outbreak as the university suspended the first week of lecture. I was worried about our preparation since my group is the group that will be conducting the activity for our first meeting at SMK(P) Sri Aman.
It was a rainy Wednesday evening on 26th February, for our first ever internal workshop on DNA Extraction. Despite I have conducted this extraction activity in a subject that I took last semester, I am still interested as we are going to conduct it using household items such as dishwash liquid and salt. Dr Puah was assisted by her four PhD students who are very helpful to guide us throughout the activity and happily entertained our questions. Even though it was tiring, seeing the passion from Dr Puah and the joy from my friends eased my feelings. I was appointed as head of logistics for our group and was responsible for buying presents for our quiz session. I still remember the clear sky on the Sunday night that we decided to buy the presents. Although it was not much, I hope that our presents can make them happy and able to pique their interest in genetics.
Friday, 28th February was the D-Day. We went to SMK(P) Sri Aman at noon right after we finished our Molecular Techniques and arrived roughly at 12.20 p.m. As I was the first group that arrived at the school, we went to setup the hall straight away as we know that time might not be on our side. Since we are not familiar with the sound system, we managed to get help from one of the students and I am surprised on how she did it. A little of MacGyver style if you ask me. At 1 p.m. we started the activity right away by briefing them about our activity for today and teaching them the basics of DNA in the terms that they’ll hopefully can understand at their level. The students are very attentive and interested to listen to the briefing. Soon we had our break and I was responsible to conduct hands on activity at 2 p.m. However, since the Friday prayer took a bit of my time, I arrived late to the school and had difficulties to find the lab, thus my friend took over the session for me. I was a bit disappointed in myself as I was not able to run the activity as I planned. However, we must carry on with the activity. Things began to go downhill from here during the quiz session as the slide were made by the Year 1 students, and (our fault) we did not go through with the slides and this caused some errors and mistakes during the quiz. I felt a mountain of disappointment in myself as I know that we can be better. But due to the lack of preparation time from our group, we let down the teachers, lecturers, our friends and even the students who are very passionate and competent during the quiz. This taught me that a thorough preparations should be made before a programme and we need everyone to work together for this.
We finished the quiz at 4.00 p.m. and said our goodbyes. Then we had a quick post-mortem with our lecturers, Dr Puah and Dr Chai. We admitted in our fault for not being thorough in our work process and promised to improve in our next session. We then took pictures with everyone before heading back. Even though the programme was tiring, plus the let downs, I was happy that we had cooperative friends who are willing to help us when we need help, helpful teachers from SMK(P) Sri Aman and of course our dedicated course coordinator, Dr Puah Suat Moi. I still feel bad for messing up because I know that we can be better but due to insufficient time to prepare and poor cooperation from the members from our group, we made our mistakes. However, I do look forward towards more activity like this as I can contribute to the society and spread knowledge that I have learnt and apply it through our hands-on activities. (964 words)
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