The Road That Ends Here, Chapter II
The Road That Ends Here will tell you the summary about two months of my life in this Merlion country. It will have six chapters, corresponding to the six terms that I will endure in this one year. The idea about the title comes from a journey to hike a mountain. I imagine that getting my master degree is like enduring a long mountain path. Between the summit and the peak, there will be five stopping points to rest and regain strength (this is Chapter I through Chapter V). After the five stopping points, if I still endure, then I will reach the peak and reach my final destination (Chapter VI). Enjoy these stories and may the tales bring you new strength and encouragement to reach your goal.
Chapter II
Disastrous.
There’s no word that can better describe what is happening in this term, it was pure two months of crazyness. Both in terms of assignments and quality of lecturer, the latter being so far worse that what we received in the first term. Both of the classes simply lacked interest, which led to many of us skipping classes and sleeping at home (especially for morning classes) because these classes were simply downright useless and not meaningful at all. Heck, with the material given we can just study it at home ourselves and get through them.
Take the Entrepreneurship class for example. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but it feels like he’s just doing a book review or summary of Peter Drucker’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship. It’s like every second he’s referring to that book - Drucker this, Drucker that - that we couldn’t help but start to think that rather than paying S$2,000 for this class, it would have been better just to buy the damn book for $50 (which is really boring anyhow) and study it ourselves. If you have a chance to look at the Drucker book and the material book I got from my campus, you’ll see what I mean right away.
What’s worse is that the assignments are heavy duty AND we are just thrown at it right away. Sure, it’s an Entrepreneurship class. Sure, entrepreneurs have to know how to make a Business Plan. But how the heck can you just expect someone to make a good 30-pages Business Plan without explaining anything at all to the class? It was very hard for us to do that when we didn’t understand anything about financials (break even analysis, cost volume profit analysis, budgeting and so on), contingency planning, control, strategic management etc. This was only our second term, hello? It makes sense if you ask us to make this in the last term, but hello? There must be something wrong with the way our classes were arranged. So in the end, got so-so grade for these assignments and what’s worse was the exam, because what he said would come out and what finally came out were so different it shocked many students. He’s a man who can’t seem to keep his own words, apparently. Maybe we can sue him or something.
The Data Management class’ problem was that it was too technical for business student’s standards, coupled with a strange “hand-gesture all around lecturer” which can’t seem to catch our interest and make us understand, it was very very boring, even for me who was an IT graduate it felt very boring and dragged out. The only interesting day during this class was in the presentation day where groups of student present on topics of new technologies they’ve been assigned on. I certainly feel that most of the groups presented way better than the lecturer, in that they managed to spark interest and had some really interesting material after all. That should say much about the quality of the lecturer. It strengthens the beliefs that IT guys can’t teach, because they can’t communicate well with human. But at least the exam for this subject is not that hard because he told us exactly what and which parts will come out in the exam.
Glad this term is over…
Thank goodness for the World Cup in this term which helped to relieve my stress (as you can see from my posts during the cup). And it was also the reason why I skipped so many morning classes. Better watch a good match and skip a boring class rather than skip the good match and attend the boring class eh?
Related Links:
The Road That Ends Here, Chapter I (May 2006)
The Road That Ends Here, Chapter III (September 2006)
The Road That Ends Here, Chapter IV (November 2006)
