NG ZHI WIN (MIC180024)

GIG 1005 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

REFLECTIVE ESSAY

Visit to SMK Sri Aman

NG ZHI WIN (MIC180024)                                                                                    DATE: 7 APRIL 2020

“What is the essence of life? To serve others and to do good.” Spoken by Greek philosopher Aristotle over 2300 years ago, one of the most ancient quotes about volunteering offers. The greatest thing about volunteering may be the benefits it offers to individual recipients, their communities, and the volunteers themselves. I am grateful that I have the opportunity to contribute to the society through the project of GIG1005 Social Engagement Course. The first concept I had about this course is a volunteering-work program. We will have to organize events like visiting an old folks home, visiting an orphanage or charity work to help people. 

Before ending of semester one of year two, Dr Puah who is our coordinator of the SE course have had a first meeting with us to discuss about the project that we were going to conduct during semester two of year two. I was quite surprised when we were told that we would be organizing a knowledge sharing session that we have learnt in Biomedical Science with the secondary school students instead of the common old folk’s home visit. Furthermore, we also had to collaborated with first year students. Thus, we had distributed into four groups and each group had to conduct different module. The four modules were “DNA extraction”, “DNA fingerprinting”, “View bacteria using foldscope” and “Shape of bacteria”. It was quite interesting as we used the materials that we could easily find in our home to conduct all of those experiment. For year 2 students, we were supposed to conduct two sessions at SMK (P) Sri Aman. However, due to pandemic outbreak of Covid-19, all of the activities were halted. Fortunately, we managed to conduct the first session which was “DNA extraction” before the announcement of movement control order by the government. 

During the semester break we had prepared all the teaching materials (ppt, quizzes, prizes). We also had internal workshop for DNA extraction and DNA fingerprinting module which was guided by Dr Puah and some helpful and friendly postgraduate students. The aim of workshop was mainly to brief us about the theories and procedures of DNA extraction so that we could deliver a clear message to those secondary students and ensure that there was no misunderstanding within our group. This internal workshop was really beneficial for me because it could boost my confidence as a facilitator on that day with the understanding of theories. I am grateful to my coursemates as everyone cooperated and communicated well with each other. Each of us were assigned with a position without any disputation.     

On 28th of February 2020, we arrived at SMK (P) Sri Aman on the afternoon. The programme started with a briefing about DNA by my coursemates and they had done a good presentation. After the presentation, we proceeded with hands on activity. I was the facilitator of a group with Wen Xuen. At first, I was quite nervous and shy to talk with them but I tried to start up a conversation with them because I knew that this is a chance to challenge myself. Challenges are what makes life interesting. The students were friendly and warm which made me feel comfortable to interact with them and able to explain the procedure smoothly. From our conversation, I realized that there was one of my group members she was not studying Science stream but Commerce. She told me that she came here with her friends because she would like to engage something that is not covered in their syllabus. I can feel the enthusiasm of the students and their eagerness to learn somethings new. I am sure that they had enjoyed the experiment as I can see those smiles on their face. Their laughter and excitement made me feel that all of our hard work was worthy. The students were also curious and asked a lot of interesting questions. Thus, Wen Xuen and I were trying our best to answer them with our knowledge although some of the questions were not related to the project.

During the quiz session, the students were responsive in answering the questions in order to get a prize. Some of them quickly flipped through the notes that they had jotted down during the presentation session. However, we had faced a problem during the quiz session. This is because we did not check the question that prepared by first years which had resulted in some confusions, but we managed to overcome it in the end. From this mistake, I have learnt that we should double check every teaching materials before present it. This is not only the job for the person who in charge of but all of us have the responsibility to do so because we work as a team. Whenever there was a problem, Dr Puah always guided us patiently and never leave us alone to face the obstacles.

Through this project, the thing I have gained is knowledge is endless, we can’t know everything in life but we should never stop learning new things. We should have passionate to learn new things just like those students from SMK (P) Sri Aman although it is not in the syllabus and does not come out in exam. I am grateful that I have a chance to share my knowledge with other and I have improved my social skill with strangers through this project. Undoubtedly, teamwork is really important to run a project successfully. I really appreciate that I am in a great team with all my course mates. Everyone did their parts and helped each other to make things successful. Last but not least, I would like to thank Dr Puah for her the guidance and suggestions as she had helped us a lot through the project.