Nur Fatin Farhanah Binti Alauddin (MIC190035)

GIG1005 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

Reflective Writing

Nur Fatin Farhanah Binti Alauddin (MIC190035) – Group 2                           Date: 24 April 2020

        At first, I was very clueless about this subject and to be honest, I was not voluntarily wanted to join this course. As a person who always spends time with her books, ‘a bookworm’, this kind of social activity would never be her kind of choice. Also, I am a very introvert person in real life. However, after looking at how excited and hyperactive our instructor, Dr. Puah in explaining about this course, I was attracted to learn and experience new things. 

      From the name of the course itself, ‘Social Engagement’, means that I need to engage or explore myself into the world of social where I must contribute to community and develop my interaction skills. I was very excited to engage myself in this course as it was different from other courses that I took in this semester. There would be no lectures, tutorials and quizzes in this subject. For sure this would be the best thing had happened especially for Biomedical Science students since they would literally be breathing a new fresh air while conducting the activities. 

     On 13th March 2020, we conducted our first activity which was ‘Internal Workshop’! So, what was internal workshop and what did we do during the internal workshop? Internal workshop was basically an exposure to us on what we would be doing during the day of our visit to school. I forgot to introduce myself, I am Fatin, one of the members of Group 2 Year 1 that will be visiting SMK Sri Pantai for the social engagement. The topic for our fieldwork was ‘Microbes and Hygiene’. The topic itself sounded interesting. 

       So, during the internal workshop, our instructor, Dr. Puah explained to us step by step on how to handle the activity, where I could still clearly remember we did a mini microscope where we could observe the specimens although the resolution was not too high. It was hard to construct even 1 mini microscope. Thank God that we could work in pairs. The thing that I learned from this activity is we need to be patient and always tolerate with our partners to ensure the task would be done nicely. We needed to display good acts since we were going to demonstrate this to the group of students from SMK Sri Pantai.

       Furthermore, there would also activities like ‘Get to Know the Microbes’ using specific shapes of balloons, ‘The Effectiveness of Using Tissues While Coughing or Sneezing’ using a spray, tissues, mahjong papers and ‘Hand Washing’ activity. These were the activities that could have been done if only we got the chance to visit the school. Unfortunately, with the sudden outbreak of pandemic Covid-19, we were unable to visit the school and had fun with the kids. 

        As an alternative, we did the fieldwork online in order to still achieve our main objective which was to contribute to community. Our group was divided into 3 subgroups where each was assigned to make video, infographic and online survey respectively. I was assigned into group of infographics where we needed to make a poster about handwashing. So, we, in a group of 6, worked together to create an informative and attractive poster. Some of us were assigned to gather all the information required for the poster and some had to design the poster prettily. Overall, the teamwork was very good, everyone did a very good job in completing their own tasks. Thus, since everyone was very committed to their works, the final product was very satisfying in my point of view.

      In conclusion, I am really grateful that I learnt a lot throughout the process of this subject. Although, our group was quite unfortunate since we could not go out conducting the field work, however, I thought we must always think positive in whatever that happens in our life. There must always be some reasons on why such event occurred. As for this case, I thought it was a very good decision of us when the fieldwork was cancelled. The Covid-19 cases was increasing, and the government was taking into measures the precaution and prevention steps on how to fight this pandemic. 

       For sure, we would not want to burden the country by creating a new cluster if we were still stubborn to do the fieldwork. Hence, by doing the fieldwork online, I think we are able to create awareness among the school community through our official blog and the biomedical science students. We become more concern about our hygiene and practice the correct ways of handwashing in our daily life. By following the government instructions during this pandemic like practicing social distancing, staying at home, wearing mask when going out, practicing correct handwashing and others, we could become a good resident for our beloved country. Thus, we could together help the country and fight the virus outbreak so that soon everyone’s life could return as normal. 

 (815 words)