However, one must have motivation, before performing any action that does not fall under the category of “procrastination”. Something, which, unsurprisingly, I have not gotten any worse at.
So anyway here I am. Trying to get started on my work. First, I try to remember what I have to do. It turns out that nothing is amazingly urgent. Except for that. I do not need to prepare for tomorrow’s chemistry quiz. I do not need to do a tutorial. I do, however, have a small amount of German homework that I could do, but the deadline seems so far away. I am realising that by definition, there isn’t a single assignment I have that I deem even vaguely important.
Thus taking “motivation” out of the picture. Surely, however, there are other factors which can induce “action”. Such as fear. Or obligation. Fear, of having my grades implode upon themselves due to a lack of interest on my part. That would be extremely unacceptable.
One of the pluses that I came up with some months ago, before I made my decision to come here, was that I would no longer need to study useless and uninteresting subjects. It seems, however, that all institutions in Singapore have an insatiable desire to press as many useless and uninteresting subjects on their students. I am referring to Communications Skills, of which there are two or three modules of. And that horrible excuse of a module known as Introduction to Molecular Biotechnology.
Aside from that, the whole "greater emphasis on practical skills" is little more than "your practical grades can kill you far more easily now". Honest. So far, none of the practicals that I have had have sufficiently imbibed appropriate laboratory etiquette or techniques into my knowledge. All I know now, is that the burettes are difficult to use, that I have been using doing titration wrong for all of my secondary school life, and that it's not a good idea to put a bunsen flame between you and something you're trying to grab.
No, the practicals are in essence useless, as they are not accompanied with a sufficient volume of theoretical knowledge. They tell us that these fancy chemicals with fancy names do certain things, so as to achieve fancy results. They do not tell us, however, how these fancy processes occur, or anything like that. Instead, I am left to find them out for myself. This, is not why I am complaining. Rather, it is more of the fact that the things that I find out for myself are entirely useless when it comes to exams and quizzes. Hence a lack of motivation.
When they told us that polytechnics are very practical-based, all they meant was that we are now able to screw up our GPA's by achieving botched up experimental results. As we only have but one opportunity to carry out each experiment, and in each one I am constantly impeded and hindered by my group's lack of insight and their inability to follow orders, it is difficult to obtain optimum(being 100% correct) results for each practical.
Also, the way our reports are assessed is completely assed. They care more about the student's ability to... Well I don't know. There was nothing in those grade-A reports that weren't in mine. Except obscure information about how sodium hypochlorite can make ionic iodine form triiodine ions. As far as I know, you need molecular iodine to react with ionic iodine before triiodide ions can form.
Also for no apparent reason, the marker circles "NaI" in my data sheet. What's wrong with NaI? It's sodium iodide. It's doing stuff. There is nothing wrong with it. Additionally, when red-lining my answers, don't write "3 sig figs!" next to it, when you were actually asking for standard form.
Standard form. Significant figures.
LEARN THE DIFFERENCE. GOD.
He's supposed to be a professional.
Well, that's unprofessionalism in just about every subject that has room for it. Microbiology? Grammatical errors and poor phrasing in the lab manual. Introduction to Molecular Biotechnology? Atrocious grammar and misspelled names of scientists. That one is really unforgivable. Chemistry? People not knowing the difference between significant figures and standard form.
So yeah. How can anyone be expected to learn anything when the lecturers and professors themselves aren't sure of what they're teaching? It's hard to believe that any of the mentioned people are, or were scientists.
Maybe "were". And then it was realised that they sucked too much, so they had to teach in a polytechnic where more people would be utterly oblivious to their mistakes.
Sigh. I notice that almost every post I have made in the past few weeks has been a rant about how idiotic people are over here. Oh well. I'd better go do some useless and uninteresting assignments so that my grades don't implode at the end of the term.
-Joe