My blog, My life.

Monday, April 14, 2008

The battle that we lost. 5:26 PM

Let me begin with my fellow team mate cum close fren's (athena) blog post because it encompasses almost the exact sentiments that i have.

"Fuck (be ready for more effing ahead). We failed our communications research report. Ru messaged me at 2.30am telling me our professor has already graded our report and emailed us our grade, which is 4.5 out of 10. My heart just dropped from my chest to my ankles, and I immediately checked our email while fumbling with the phone to call Shar up. I knew she was sleeping and this call could possibly irritate Zhen Jie as well, but I had to call and let her know the bad news. Yes, the impact was that enormous for this kind of immediacy in the middle of the night during a study break.

FUCKING HELL. First time ever in my life I failed a report. First fucking time, out of 46 projects I have done in my entire life, I FAILED a report. I don't look to well to the presentation grade because his comments were far from positive as well. I can already see my first 'C-' in school. The exam is only 20%, presentation and report constitute 50%, so save the typical comforting to work harder for the finals. Hence the more I don't quite understand why he had to send us our grade a week before the paper: to signpost us to work harder or let us know the bad news asap? WHATEVER, you just failed us without blinking an eye. I'm not that dumb to realise the additional 0.5 mark was out of sympathy.

I was on the line with Ru and Shar for 1 1/2 hours. Three of us are utterly traumatised, wondering what the hell did we do wrong or what did we not do to deserve such a lousy grade. During his consultations, the prof was very encouraging and said he looked forward to seeing our final presentation. The checkpoint with our client was unexpectedly affirmative. It's a nightmare, downright nightmare.

I was intending to hit TWC notes and another seminar of MS when I learnt about the report's tragedy. So what if I repeatedly ask "why" in my head, so what if we spent so much effort in taking down observations at the rurally situated supermarkets and risk being caught taking photographs, so what if the prof just favoured other groups who were researching on explicitly luxury products when luxury should not be defined by consumer segments as mentioned by the client, so fucking what? "

To correct her a little, it was the bloody ang moh client that gave us that awful grade instead of my professor. Nonetheless, 3 of us still knew it's bleak. That fucking blonde bald, on top of everyone, stunned our project progress not once but twice and towards the end at checkpoints he always said "Orh.. interesting, well done, girls, etc."

I jumped out of my bed at 2.30am when she called coz i forgot to change that freak mobile profile and asked her thrice "really?!?!"Its simply unbelievable. i can't come to terms with it nor i had the courage to switch on my modem and read that merciless email at 4am. he even said that we made several spelling and grammar mistakes which is not excusable for a corporate communications student (especially when you could have done a spell check easily). Yes, he is right. Apart from our Chinese surnames, WE DID NOT see ANY FUCKING RED OR GREEN zigzag lines within any of our fucking sentences that we cracked our heads to put into a fuck 2 page report for a FREAK intensive RESEARCH project. I felt accused and frustrated with that 1st sentence of his email. I wished that virus in my lap top was also present in his head so i can bring him to CIT and kill him.

Nevertheless, deep down in my heart i knew its a battle for a lost cause. We'd never win. We will never win a battle with a general deeming his army was already lousy comparing to the rest.
It was clearly evident who he liked and who he didn't. No matter how much we attempt to work towards what he wants.

The sheer amount of effort we put in was indescribable. How many supermarkets we went,the amount of scrutiny that was given to the overwhelming product-oriented supermarkets, the thrashing we got from trying to take pictures when he initially said it was not important and the client in the end say its was important. He just has to screw us up over and over.

His requirements was forever changing. For a moment he wants A and we try to deliver he said we were "Yes. not fully this not fully that." then we worked towards that inadequacy and he now says "no attempt was for this and that (when we tried) , more research on your part would be better." WTF. Our research was stated right there but its just never up to what you want, it's false, insufficient to what you need. then, what the hell is??!?!?! Problem is, we don't even know what exactly you want because only those you favour would match up to your ever changing expectations and requirements.

I feel unjustified and annoyed at how can all our hard work only fetch a fail grade. So what if you will only release the grade after our exams. In our hearts, we already know what you are going to give (since the exercise before the project) to us and to the rest. I realised Kat's group suffered the same fate. Still, I'm just very affected. I can think of some small flaws that can be improved but i know it definitely was not sufficient for a fail.

FUCK. i cannot suppress this.

Lets share with you another crucial aspect of this campus - Class participation.
Recently, campus TV network came up with this.

Class Participation, A Documentary from SMU Campus TV on Vimeo.

The balloons are really funny and cute. In fact, i think its illustrates the emotions and faces that you see in class day in and out. There is this girl that wrote a rather harsh and long blog post bout this video that she has seen. She's an American but migrated to Singapore when she was 4 and she went thru our Singapore education system, formerly in NUS now she's back in the States studying psych.

Reading her really long post, i think some of her thoughts coincides with mine.
Participating in class of course there are pros and cons but i believe the pros are more.
To certain people, is fluff, is bullshit, is not necessary or even just a talk to score points.
Thing is, they think is that easy to just talk in class. It is easy but consider the large class size of bout 40 people wanting to grab that opportunity to speak up against you, your professor could possibly hide "stupid" in front of u and perhaps hearing others in the toilet commenting bout your "talk" being bimbo, extra and fucking irritating. That. Is something the system, students or professors can't capture with the system.

In the documentary, one of the moustachey professor is my year one instructor. He might say "i would never criticise any of my students. There are no stupid answers. It's how the professors facilitate the class discussion, etc." Truth to be told, he is by far the worst professor at doing that.

He completely sucked big time. I can vividly remember him saying "women are stupid" in class. SERIOUSLY?!?! I just was damn pissed with him and he just deters me from further participation especially when he tried to dismiss me few times when i participated. Mind you, its really difficult for a freshman to assimilate into that new 'talking' culture. Moreover, we all come from a background that doesn't foster that kind of 'talk' and it doesn't help when that fucking TA (who happens to me my business camp facilitator) told me in my face, "WHAT the hell is WRONG with you? just participate, its not difficult to speak up in his class." Bloody basket. Just because he is used to this culture doesn't mean he can be that rude to me and make sweeping statements of me not wanting to participate. He didn't ask why. Bloody arsehole.

Ok, that aside. That blogger i was talking about earlier.
Here's something she says that i think makes the same point that i agree bout the system.

"... And yet again, we still hold America as the epitome of progress and whatnot. I don’t get the Singaporean system, quite honestly. We adopt a British education system for the first 12 years and then you except the students to automatically adjust to a system that is so radically and structurally different (read “Sponsored and Contest Mobility and the School System” by Ralph H. Turner if you’re interested in the differences between the American and British systems of education. In short, education is not an independent faction and is generated by the cultural values in any given society) in university. You cannot expect us to be raised in a culture founded on elite values (nitpick with me about this and I swear I will cut you) and then suddenly say ‘okay, we’re all equal and we always need to stay on our toes and be competitive!’ and expect us to change our ideas like that. I feel SMU seems to have meshed these two ideas together, except now you’ve generated a student population that competes with the world while believing themselves to be superior to their own people. Not exactly a good thing to discriminate against your own, sweets... "

She continues challenging the notion of correlation between being vocal and being better employees in future. While maybe there is no data but i guess the reason why they wanted class participation in the system explains why, the industry saw such communication skills lacking in their employees, You can get straight As but if you can't present you ideas to your clients/bosses, you can't maintain positive relationships with fellow colleagues/ potential clients, i guess your life is only gonna get tougher. So for that, i think class participation is still having pros over its cons.

And of course its about quality participation, and not a being a blabbering idiot (who u can instantly spot in class.) who wants to butt in, in every damn sentence the professors tries to say. its really annoying. Think: that Indian girl in my coms class. the whole class hates her without a doubt except her only fellow friend in class.

You think before you speak - at least that is what i do. its true that we can't change a personality trait, however, as we do learn from our FT class, even networking skills can be learned over time. i guess being able to speak up in front of a class and overcoming that fear can too be learned/ abolished. Despite asking for those data she mentioned, i think its pretty obvious that Singaporeans are naturally more conservative being Asians in nature.

Since we were little, we were always told by our parents "I say No means No, don't challenge me and don't ask why." We grow up into adults that are little afraid of voicing out our opinions thinking it maybe too rude or insensitive. But i think its only logical to mature as we grow up, and from it i learn that we CAN voice out but just be tactful. Its always about how you phrase your vocabulary not whether you can say or not.

Additionally, Elaine brought up another point that i think of too.

"... What my experience has taught me is that the professor knows more than you do. That’s the entire purpose of teaching: to impart knowledge. You cannot come into a Psychology class and proclaim, ‘I think video games influences aggression’; you don’t have the data and research knowledge the professor has.

The best professors, I believe, impart to you the knowledge required to make your own decisions. That was the sole reason why I fell in love with my History 331 class. Schools of thought are not new in any medium, and you have to find where you stand in the arena. A professor isn’t supposed to push onto you what he believes, because if he is intelligent enough, he should concede that there are other schools of thought that can explain this better. This is really the entire principal of what psychology is founded upon. There are multiple schools of thought (cognitive, behavioural, biological, psychoanalytical, etc), and all who teach Psych agree that it is a combination of all that possibly influence our behaviour.

If all you’re doing in class is challenging what the professor says, then I think it says something about the professor..... "

I can't tolerate those fucktards who think so highly of themselves (there are many in my school) and they just love to argue they way out whenever they are pointed out that there can be improvements made. Think: the same girl from my coms class, her project group's performance and their Q&A. Downright impolite and irritating.

lastly, i totally agree with her saying "If the boss doesn’t like you, you’re never getting promoted, and if you’re employed by a boss who has been described as Machiavellian or authoritarian, then speaking up is not going to do you a bit of good at all." How true, see my professor who fail me in time to come (refer to 1st paragraph).

Ok. dinner time.
Ethics exams tmrw. arggghhh.

If you wanna read more bout her comments you can go to: http://www.confutatis.org/20080331/class-participation-and-smu/