Muhammad Fiqri bin Yusri (MIC180019)

GIG1005 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT/JALINAN MASYARAKAT 

Reflection Writing 

Muhammad Fiqri bin Yusri (MIC180019) 26th APRIL 2020 

I have never heard of a programme called Social Engagement before ever since I stepped into University of Malaya as a student. Personally, I did not even think of joining any volunteering programme as I am mostly more focused on my studies. It changed after Dr Puah came to us and said that we will be having a course programme that was based on volunteering. From that day, my thoughts and perspective towards volunteering programme has never been the same. At the end of 3rd semester, Dr Puah briefly informed us about the details of the course. Since the semester break was around the corner, Dr Puah has taken the initiative to make sure we contact her through emails regarding the tasks that we all need to do and all the updates from her. We were also advised to make a group in Whatsapp app so it will be easier for us to work those tasks. You would have expected me to be less interested at first as we all need to do our works virtually. Furthermore, our first internal workshop had to be cancelled during the first week of the 4th semester due to COVID-19 in which caused us to improvise a little bit throughout the programme.

Nevertheless, the second workshop of the programme were held on 26th of February, where we were briefed with the activities of the modules, conducted by Dr Puah and her four PhD students. It was a quite of joy that we had a quality time with all of my classmates in handling the experiments which are DNA extraction and DNA fingerprinting. Furthermore, it excites me so much because I have never exposed with such experiments and made me cannot wait to demonstrate it in front of the students during the actual event. The explanation from Dr Puah and her associates were very detailed and calm. Thus, it made me felt very confident to explain it later during the actual event without any problems as I have a problem with expressing myself or explaining things towards others with the help of my classmates. Also, from this workshop, I learnt that early planning of a programme is essential so that the programme can run smoothly.

The actual day of the event has arrived. It was held on 28th February which was Friday. We were instructed to travel to the actual place of the event that was SMK (P) Sri Aman. We travelled during the noon of the day right after our practical. Most of my classmates booked a Grab to reach the school while I did a solo travel by myself by using my motorbike so that I can save up some of the budget. Thanks to my friend, Ooi Jin Kiak, all of my classmates were able to arrive on time as he did an exceptional job on making sure we followed the tentative. The session right before the Jumuaah prayer was quite short because most of the boys had to rush to the mosque for prayers and mostly were held by the Group 2 girls with the help of the other 2nd year group especially for the lab preparation. The session right after the prayer was the moment I have been waiting for. It was the session where we will demonstrate the experiments to the attending students, much of them were very excited just by looking on their faces. We began the demonstration first with the DNA fingerprinting and then DNA extraction. We would teach them the basics of the DNA first so that they would not be confused about the topic. The demonstrators were my friends that are Amir Hamzah and Alicia Anne. All of the students were very attentive and so focused it made me so happy that the programme was running smoothly. However, during the quiz session, we faced a bit of complications with the slides since there has been an error that led us to improvise. Despite of the error, the demonstrator did a great job to make sure things under controlled. Even the Dr Puah helped us smoothen things up during that situation. It was that time I learnt that things may not go according to plan so we need to prepare ourselves to improvise based on the situation.

After that session, we met our ends of the event and had to say goodbyes to the student. It was such an amazing memory for me as it was my first time joining a volunteering programme. From that moment, I thought I should join more since I can improve a lot in terms of communicating skills, be exposed more with the community environment and learn many different perspectives from others. Right before we went back home, we had a short post-mortem with the lecturers, Dr Puah and Dr Hwa Chai to review back all of the things happened during the programme. Some of the mistakes were made and Dr Puah advised us to improve the next time we ever join volunteering programmes. At the end of the day, I was very happy that I had a great time with my friends and were able to teach students something new that probably can incite an interest in them. Lastly, I hope that I can join more of these kinds of programme so that I can improve myself and contribute more towards the society.