Just the other day I lugged my organic chemistry textbook (which I used in my very first semester in university) to work so I could use it as a reference book should the students (who are embarking on a chemistry-related project) need it. The 2nd group of students (different project) saw the book and asked if I used it in junior college. I said no and that if they were adventurous and in the mood to scare themselves, they could knock themselves out flipping through the book.

The next thing I knew, the following transpired between 2 of the students in that group.

Student A: Woah... This looks so confusing, never seen any of these before. See already, don't feel like studying .

Student B: I feel like sleeping after seeing this.

Student A: You can still sleep? I feel like fainting!!!

Today was the 2nd session I had with my students, who I semi-affectionately refer to as 'my kids'.

Yes, I somehow sprouted 10 kids from nowhere.

Anyway, as I believe I have mentioned, they are nice kids, so they don't drive me up the wall or anything like that.

They've started chatting with me, other than the consulting me part of course. And as I've mentioned, because they're young and inexperienced, sometimes their focus is really all over the place. But they try and I appreciate that. I wish I had a better way of putting my ideas across to them though, because all these scientific technical terms have become part and parcel of my vocabulary so I can't help but use them when I'm talking about experiments and I'm pretty sure that they get pretty confused.

At least they're not hating me and they're pretty respectful kids. :)

I mean if you don't want some stranger who's really not your teacher poking about, you wouldn't ask that I drop by the next time. My opinions seem to matter a lot to them as well. It's not about me needing to feel important, in fact, I don't think I am, but it is strange how they seem to want to know what I think.

I want to help them as much as I possibly can, but if I do that, I might as well complete their project for them. So I spent my time answering their queries with.. even more questions.

For example:

Student: So should we use normal toothpaste or whitening toothpaste?
Me: What are you really out to investigate? The action of toothpaste when it's a toothpaste, or the action of the extra stuff in whitening toothpaste? You're testing the effectiveness of different approaches, so you need to be clear on what do you want to test in each approach.
Student: *looks worried*

Having nice kids to mentor means I'm relatively immune from those kids that horror stories are made of. Kids who try to peer up your skirt (I wore pants the last 2 times), harass you et cetera. The kids I work with are probably the best in the subject in the school and they're well behaved. As in excessively well-behaved, they almost remind me of me when I was in secondary school (read: teacher's pet). It almost doesn't feel like work when I'm working. Phew.

Seriously, I'm still up at 3.24am because I was researching my students' projects. At least I'm not needed in school till 3.15pm. Over the past 5 hours, I've read a scientific journal article, went through more Wikipedia articles on chemistry than I could possibly care to and dug out for organic chemistry text for help. I gave up at 3am because I decided I quite possibly had enough information to make them worried and more information would probably cause them to panic.

I hope they have some form of system in place by now though. Or else... they're screwed....I'm not gonna kill them, but their projects will be in deep trouble.

Work isn't going to start soon, it already started. 2 hours of standing around, observing a bunch of 16 year olds conduct experiments, occasionally telling them something earned me $50. WOOHOO. Is this job easy or what? Well they're preparing for a competition now, so this is my main responsibility for the next 2-3 weeks.

The kids are nice enough, 16 year olds rushing to conduct experiments and present them to a panel of judges. But being young as they are, and having very little experience in planning experiments, they lack direction.

One team looked at me as if I was speaking Greek when I suggested that they start planning what they wanted to include in the presentation's introduction since they actually had time to kill. The same team then looked at me as if I then switched to Latin when I suggested they start planning the subsequent steps of the experiments, telling them how they need to plan for at least the next couple of steps, so they won't have to waste time thinking what to do when they got to that point. Like a when you perform step X, you expect to obtain outcome Y and what do you do when you get to Y? IF instead of getting Y, you get Z instead, what do you do?

The 2nd team doesn't know what a controlled experiment is, I realised that when I got to their bench, they were carrying out experiments without recording what they were doing, not recording down what materials they used, what concentrations they used, what volumes added etc. They were adding any volume of any liquid they liked. It's not a complicated project, they're just inexperienced.

I found myself chanting to myself that they're only 16. It makes me wonder if I knew what controlled experiments were when I was 16 and makes me wonder if I knew how to effectively use my time back then. I find myself lowering my expectations for them but I don't know if I'm doing it because it's an age thing, an intelligence thing or something else completely. It's discriminatory, I know, and I'm rather ashamed to admit it. I think it's probably an experience thing, them not knowing what to do. I've had time in junior college to learn how to complete projects, and how to plan simple experiments, my time so far in university has required me to occasionally draw on that same set of skills. Theirs... let's just say they're just starting to hone it. Hopefully it'll get better soon, considering they don't have much time left.

I finally decided on which school's offer to take up for the Teacher's Aide Programme. There were 2 schools that seemed really keen on working with me, I met with one last Thursday and the other today.

Let's call the first school A and the 2nd B.

A definitely has a major plus point being near the train station, and is probably a better school academically speaking. It seems to have more facilities and teachers. It's more focused on what it wants but I felt kind of awkward during the interview. I wasn't sure if I could do what they were looking for. I mean I can do it on my own, I'm not so sure how I'm going to prevent a bunch of adventurous and mischievous 14 year olds from trying to ingest E. coli. (o.O) Oh and did I mention that A is affiliated with a certain religion, one whose believers has made numerous attempts to belittle my beliefs? Not that I have anything against the religion and the bulk of its believers, but I'm not too sure how I'm going to take it if I keep hearing references to the religion when I'm working. I might develop some sorta personality disorder trying to keep my atheistic tendencies away from them because I don't believe that I should be telling people not to believe just as how they shouldn't have the right to tell me to believe.

B is more out of the way, takes me about 15 minutes longer to get there, nowhere near a train station, has very limited bus services plying the area. BUT it is just opposite one of the greatest hawker centres in the country (LOL!). Great food beckons just by working there. The people there are nicer, a whole lot less intimidating than the ones I met in A (well I met 2, one was ok, the other was a little scary and pushy). Moreover, B seems to need the help, the teacher was saying how it was hard to keep an eye on all 40 plus students in the lab with only one teacher around. A on the other hand, seems to have more biology teachers. Not to mention they(A) admitted to only having 2 biology classes, both of which aren't full biology classes, so they have around 30 to 40 students in a cohort taking biology. B seems to have around double that amount.

So yup, I finally chose B. Needless to say, A didn't sound too happy. =S

Having nice things to blog about. But since I don't, if I do blog, it'll be all the boring stuff that's happening.

URSA is being a pain.... I'm trying to log in and the site is down (it's supposed to be up at this time!).

I have to leave for tuition in 15minutes. Did I mention I got offered the gig on a more permanent basis? Apparently, I don't have enough faith in my time management ability (to juggle 2nd year Life Science work, driving lessons and tuition lessons) and I'm not sure if I'm that good a tutor.. so I haven't accepted the offer. I have a feeling I kinda suck. Lol. The reason why I got offered the gig? My cousin told my uncle that she understands more about the topics after I go through them since she can understand me due to a certain level of chemistry between us (after hearing that, YOU went into a stage of mock outrage lol).

I'm going out later to get my glasses done, and get some more medication to bring to the States. Parkway... with heavy books in the bag. Ok, I need to go, cya!

I finally worked my brain today, some 3 weeks after I stopped thinking critically.

Not that I thought critically today but my brain was a lot more active than it has been in recent weeks.

I prepped for tomorrow's tuition session.... normally I wouldn't be caught dead doing it because to me, I'm not my cousin's tutor, I rather be thought of as a facilitator, but after the first session, I realise that to facilitate, your charge has to have some form of basic grounding and in certain topics, her school made no attempt to lay proper foundations, resulting in lecture theatres full of confused students. So I shall facilitate for certain topics and probably tutor for others. I'm a bad tutor I think, considering I'm a "rationaliser", meaning I tend to apply logic and rationalise things so as to understand them, something that might not work for many people who need examples and figures to help them along. Me? I somehow ignore the figures and examples 70% of the time in my lecture notes. I can only hope she takes something away from my sessions with her.

So I thought, you know what? To hell with the no homework thing I originally planned (doesn't mean I want to drown her in work alright?). I'm still NOT giving her homework, except that this time I'm giving her questions and assignments to complete on the spot. At least for the upcoming session. Anything that we can't finish would be left to her discretion. She can decide whether she wants to do it or not, because I've been through junior college and I know how they try to drown their students in homework and projects over the holidays.

So in prepping the assignments for tomorrow, I just worked my brain in certain economics concepts (not too much), but the one that took a lot of work? Chemistry. My arch-nemesis in junior college. Ironically, the worst grade I ever got in junior college was an O for biology (my pet subject).

It came to my attention that the Newpaper (our local daily tabloid-bah!) wrote an article on the major boo-boo that occurred during an exam conducted by the local partner of a foreign university (note my attempts at being vague but if you're in Singapore and if you read yesterday's Newpaper, you would know, otherwise the details I provide should be fine).

For one, I'm not unaccustomed to lecturers giving students the wrong hint, it's happened to be before in my first semester in university where a lecturer gave blatant hints for the exam/CA only to have NONE of the topics blatantly hinted at appear. What did I learn? Ignore whatever blatant tips lecturers (especially that particular lecturer) give because sometimes, those hints can really screw you up during your test; like how you end up spending 2 days studying the hinted topics and 1 day on the rest (when you could have given equal time to each, but personally, I start studying a week or two before CAs) and then the entire test is based on the portion you spent 1 day on. Boo to such lecturers.

Anyway, it seems the real case in this matter is that:

1) Exam paper was split into 3 portions; Sections A, B and C. Section A accounts for 50%, consisting on 1 compulsory short answer question (with many parts to it). Section B has one compulsory essay question accounting for 25%. Section C accounts for the remainder and allows candidates to select 1 out of a number of questions.

2) The lecturers at this private university in Singapore decided to teach to to the paper. What do I mean? They taught their students how to handle the paper specifically. Something I didn't encounter in my tertiary institution and I took a Sociology module myself this semester and the exam in question? Sociology! Yes, the news did report that they had 21 weeks to teach but guess what? We had 13 weeks to learn and we covered more than they did? The lecturers spent 4 weeks prepping them for Section C, and instead of covering multiple topics, they had chosen to cover one topic. Murphy's Law came into action and that one topic they were prepped for was mistakenly omitted. The result? One exam hall full of panicky students.

3) Examiners (more senior than invigilators) didn't want invigilators helping the students out too much. My presiding examiner insisted the students were wrong, I in turn could only appease them by saying that everyone has the same problem so the best solution would be to try their best and then reflect the problem to the university.

4) We weren't notified that a lecturer was on site, so without knowing, how were we supposed to ask him?

Essentially, the fault pretty much falls on every party available.

The London side for leaving questions out by mistake, the examiners for not being sure and reprimanding the invigilators whenever we tried to help them clarify some of their doubts (I was ignored the first 6 times I brought the problem up to my examiner), the local lecturers for teaching to the paper (seriously, it's a little naive to conduct your syllabus in that manner, especially when you're taking the paper as an external candidate and the setter isn't even in the same country and timezome, always good to play safe by prepping for 3-4 topics).

And one more grouse, there was a remark that the first section was uncharacteristically difficult, I glanced through the paper and recognised it to be solely based on the topics I was lectured for at my first lecture for my Sociology module. Actually, it was pretty easy, a little annoying though for the portions on research and experiment. I just didn't like their compulsory essay question, that one sucked.

All in all, I don't get why the tabloid would write something essentially one-sided and I'm pretty disappointed in some university programs have resorted to teaching to the paper. It seems as if the program is there simply to throw a degree to the student; that takes the sacrosanctness out of attending university as an institution, one where you're supposed to learn and challenge your thoughts, broaden your perspective (most of the time I sound like a jaded undergraduate but hey, I do appreciate the value and role of a university, and it isn't as simple as torturing students so as to throw a degree at them). Attending such a university takes the point out of attending university altogether. The practical nature of the Singapore society has evidently won and has reduced the institution of attending university to one that provides a stepping stone to a better future (arguably); the means to an end. To an idealist, this is tragic and it's a nightmare. And I'm not much of one myself, but yet even I can see the sadness in how the institution of education has deteriorated.