Noor Farahani binti Alias (MIC190031)

GIG1005 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

REFLECTIVE ESSAY

By: Noor Farahani binti Alias (MIC190031)                          Date: 17th April 2020

       

         Stepping outside of your comfort zone is never easy. This is the perfect phrase for what I am going to reflect in this essay. On the 5th of December, Year 1 and Year 2 students had their first briefing together with our instructor, Dr Puah about the new course which is Social Engagement. The first time I heard of the word ‘Social Engagement’, I was very afraid. ‘Social’ is to be around people whereas ‘Engagement’ is to meet people at a particular time and place or to interact with other people. I was afraid of not being able to give the best for the assignment that will be given by Dr Puah. This is because I am an introvert and always struggle interacting with other people especially strangers. During the briefing, Year 1 students were divided into two groups and Year 2 students were also divided into two groups which brings to a total of four groups. Each group had to prepare a different module to be presented at the selected secondary schools.

        My group (Year 1 group 2) were obligated to prepare a module entitled ‘The Secret of Life: DNA’. I volunteered to do the slide presentation with eight other students. Other than that, we also had to develop survey questions and prepare gifts for the winners of the interactive quizzes. Social engagement really does interpret the word ‘engagement’ as we communicated with each other very well. Although we never had a proper meeting as a group, we divided our tasks through ‘WhatsApp’ app. Everybody showed such a good team worker and had done their fair share of the work even though we were supposed to rest during our holiday.

         After the holiday, we were informed that we had to conduct activities that were related to microbes and hand hygiene on the 3rd April and 10th of April 2020 in SMK Sri Pantai. I was nervous but at the same time, I was eager and looking forward to it. As a major preparation, Dr Puah asked us to select a date for our first internal workshop. After few discussions, we agreed that the internal workshop will be held on the 13th of March 2020 in the seminar room of Biomedical Science department. My friends and I managed to get there in time and as soon as we sat on the available chairs, Dr Puah gave each of us melon milk and varieties of biscuits. We were so touched and grateful to have Dr Puah as our instructor. There were so many activities throughout the internal workshop. First, Dr Puah prepared special kits that can be folded to be used as a real microscope. It was called ‘foldscope’. It was fascinating. Never in my entire life I witnessed such a spectacular item and I thank Dr Puah for this. We worked in pairs and used the folded microscope to observe the slide that has been prepared in the lab. It was terrific and I would never forget this moment. The second activity was to recreate certain microbes by using different shapes of balloons. There was one balloon with a bizarre shape. It was in spiral shape and Dr Puah told us that those balloons represented Campylobacter Jejuni. The third activity was to measure the distance of droplet particles that would spread during sneezing under different situations. From this experiment, I realised that it is important to cover your mouth when sneezing so that we can reduce the particles from spreading to other people. The last activity was to prove the effect of handshake by using a special powder that will glow under ultraviolet light. It was hectic and fun. Up to this point, I am confident that the students of SMK Sri Pantai will gain a lot of knowledge from these activities.

         Sadly, since the outbreak of COVID-19 from last February, the World Health Organization (WHO) has identified it as a pandemic in March. The government encouraged us to stay at home and not to attend any mass gathering to avoid the disease from spreading. Therefore, Dr Puah has to cancel our Social Engagement activities in SMK Sri Pantai for the sake of our safety. We were so devastated but we know that it is for the best. Then, Dr Puah asked us to prepare a video, posters and questionnaire that are related to microbe and hand hygiene. In our group, there is one team that are responsible in recording and editing the video about the proper hand washing steps which consists of 7 steps. The other two teams have to prepare posters regarding the COVID-19 and hand hygiene. For the last team, we had to develop an online survey about hand hygiene and make a full report about it. To be honest, there was no problem in completing the tasks. All of my members have shown dedication and gave their best in every tasks that were given.

        Lastly, I would like to thank Dr Puah for all the experiences that I have gained in this course. Even though we had no chance to conduct the activities at SMK Sri Pantai, we are still grateful as we are able to create awareness about hand hygiene which can be implemented in our current situation. At the same time, I also want to thank all of my teammates because they were willing to spend their time, energy and money in order to prepare the slide presentations, gifts, quizzes, posters, and online survey. If there were another opportunity for me to join a program like these in the future, I would gladly grab the chance to join it.

(935 words)