Friday, October 12, 2007
The Assignments Haven't Got Me Down!!!!The Assignments Haven't Got Me Down!!!!
Yeah!! For the past few weeks, i was mainly killing assignments and knocking them down, and thankfully, I was the one knocking em down and not them knocking me down..haha...and tats probably de reason i din blog for such a long time...
Really thank the Lord for helping me thru all this while for all my presentations, assignments and essays...they managed to be completed satisfactorily..hehe... first it was the maths presentation which I could say, was rather well prepared as I had group members who were super meticulous, and I was actually quite shuai bian compared to them...haha...which made me realise that i'm actually quite a carrot-stick driven kind of person, driven mainly only by extrinsic motivation (except for a few situations where i can truly admit that my actions were driven mostly by intrinsic motivation). I seem to treat studying in NIE different from studying in NUS, for the simple reason that the impact of grades in NIE is not as "great" and "impactful" on your future as in NUS. Somehow to me, the amount of effort i put into doing something is directly proportional to how much it'll really affect me. To put it simply, scoring distinctions in NIE doesnt really help to increase the big bucks u earn, but the class of your honours degree in NUS does...hence the amount of effort put in and my level of "shuai bian-ness" varies proportionally. To me, it seems practical, but probably not everyone will agree wif tat. But being more shuai bian wasnt totally a bad thing actually, as I actually experience lesser stress, and under a less stressful environment, I feel that I get to enjoy the classes better...
Just like when I was in NUS, there were a series of modules which I could frankly say that I enjoyed studying them, and was not studying just for the sake of studying...and it was mainly because the lessons were conducted under a non-stressful but fun and engaging environment. And those modules were none other than my bahasa indonesia language modules!!! Many thanks to the patient Ibus who never failed to make my day with their lessons!!! Basically, bahasa classes were a time to de-stress, something much needed during my NUS days... There was once when I actually considered taking up a job tat deals with some form of translation of the language, but dropped that idea in the end for teaching as there's bound to be a greater demand for teachers than translators... sadz.... :(
BUT all was not lost!!!! I thank God that He actually gave me a chance to try out a bahasa translation job as a translator at Singapore prisons for research purposes for part time!!! Was really glad for that oppotunity, as I was once praying that God would grant me a job that I truly enjoy doing. My translations were mostly done verbally thru interactions with the inmates, but there were some written translations to be done too...and it was from this job that i realised man's weaknesses when it comes to translations..It's just IMPOSSIBLE to translate every single part of the article word for word to give the exact effect of the intended meaning in the original scripts!!! Only God can do that. Maybe you might think that bahasa in only my 3rd language, and I might not be sufficiently proficcient in it yet, but I did try translating it to chinese, a language which i shd be more familiar wif, and the conclusion's still the same! Through that job, it actually convicted me of my stand on a certain issue which was going on in church some time ago (might be sensitive...so shall not mention it here) But i guess u noe wat i mean if u attend the same church as me. Oh well, each person is entitled to his own opinion anyway...
Haha...written quite alot liao...so shall stop here now...actually was initially intending to blog bout presentations, assignments, projects n essays at NIE, but guess my chain of thoughts digressed into what u see above...haha... Oh but there's another thing I want to thank God for too, that is for giving me so many christian friends at NIE, which actually helps in creating a better working environment...and u dun actually need to teach at a christian missionary sch to hav christian teacher colleages. At the neighbourhood sch i taught at for a month recently for ESE, God has blessed me with many christian colleagues too!! Thank God for that!! Will blog bout it more next time, assuming my train of thought doesn't digress...haha.....
11:29 PM
Lyna