Repeated knowledge >.<

RJ: What aspect of today’s learning did you enjoy and what did you dislike? Why?

That familiar smell, the ambiance dim lightings and those memorable sounds from the equipment in the laboratory. I am finally backed in the laboratory after so long! Images flash through my thoughts, bring memories of those laboratory time together with my previous classmates.

I had always enjoy laboratory sessions, where I could really interact practically with the knowledge I learnt. With interactions with the knowledge that I would be learning, I felt much easy to learn as they form picture-formed memories in my head.

But while I was enjoying the laboratory session, I was disappointed that we would not be handling real actual equipment on the first trial. As some of these activities I had already done before, I had got bored easily.

Nevertheless, I understand that the actual equipment might be expensive. But at least, I hope that today’s lesson was a bit more challenging.

Bypassing?

RJ: Do you think EIA is effective in protecting a nature area? Would you prefer to be a developer or a nature conservationist?

EIA is drafted by environmental consultants, to seek agreement to members of public and approval from the developing boards of a particular country.

With considerations of the country’s interest and needs, objection towards the EIA could be easily bypassed through compensations or usage of authority. Without fully protecting the nature area, EIA is being established by developments.

To obtain quick confirmation, environmental consultants might even ignore certain information to get quicker approvals.

Additionally, nature area could also be exposed to other non-major projects that EIA could not be used to protect the nature area. For example the development of agriculture, that might lead to negative impacts towards nearby nature areas.

On the other hand, EIA is effective in protect a nature area, as it monitors the growth of the development and quickly identify the impacts of the development before the project is being carried out. With a guideline of how the development should carry out, the impacts towards environment could be reduced.

With EIA, voice of the public could also have a stand in disapproving the establishment of the development before any losses are beyond retrieve. For example in Finland, development of Highway 1 (E18), members of public feedback that flying squirrels are being threatened with the new development of the highway, and thus additional construction are being delayed in a legal manner.

Protecting the nature is important, but my interest lies with conserving instead.

I recalled that it all begins with this teacher, in my primary school, who shown me the growth of a green bean. Days passed, and finally this seedling was grown from this ‘dead’ seed. It struck me like a burning interest than. When I got home, I planted everything I could find at home; hoping that I could get seedlings like what my teacher had growth. Since then, I had discovered my interest for plants.

I love the greens. They had never failed to fascinate me with their beautiful colors and shapes. In fact, I like flowers too, but had never got a chance to grow them in the pots available at home. My love for them had slowly developed from the greens, to the flowers and fruits, towards the different types of plants and finally to the nature.

By chance, after my ‘O’ Levels, I was directed to Diploma of Environmental Science. From Republic Polytechnic, I re-discover my love for the amazing nature, and preserving and development the nature is what I would be more interested in.

RJ: Everyday in class, I go on IM and/or facebook, or I play online games, how do all these help my studies? Explain.

With the advancing softwares available across the internet, communication between parties is being bridged. But with this advantage, comes with disadvantage as well, where our communication face to face is being compromised.

This disadvantage of the state of art communication is being misused to a large extend, so much so that we had being to rely heavily on these form of communication. Just like all other human beings, we too like to communicate.

In our class, it is happening every second as we are keen to communicate with the outside world. Though this form of communication helps us to distress from studies, but extensive of it would certainly bring harm to our learning.

I conclude, these forms of communication had little or no help to our studies.

It's time

RJ: A new year, how do you feel to be back in class again?

I always look towards the holidays, as finally school work could be taken off my workload and I could concentrate on other aspect of my life. But on the other hand, I had mix feelings about holidays as well. During this period of time, I would have trouble planning my free time and usually would have additionally chores at home.

While I am spending my days off through holidays, there are days where time passes by very quickly. But on certain days, I just hope that the skies quickly turn dark. Sometimes, even in holidays, I would wake up early in the morning like how I usually do. Its till than, I realise schooling had became part of my life.

When I step back to class again, the atmosphere was heavy and many of my peers had lost the drive they used to have. Voices were limited and class is getting lifeless. On my side, a good night sleep had made me better prepared for the first day of school, but I can’t seems to access to the knowledge I learnt before the holidays.

I was not warmed up. Conversation during class discussion doesn’t flows well either. Constantly, I felt that I am lost and my team had gone far beyond me. Even reading notes and resources from the last lesson doesn’t help either. But this only occurs on the first day of school.

As days heads down the week, momentum swing back into action and my body clock was tune back to the correct waking time. Everything flows nicely when I reaches class early to get myself prepared.

What did you meant?

RJ: Reflect on the quote - "The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate" - Joseph Priestley.

We always thought that others would understand us when communicate what we meant, but in fact, we didn’t; we thought that communicating to others of what we meant by ‘communication’, would be communication. But in fact, we did not even started at all.

“What you meant by communication, might not meant to me by communication”, one of this phrase I recalled had impacted the way I used to communicate to people, where some of my peers feedback that they had got the wrong idea of what I intended to say.

During a period of my life, I frequently used words or phrases with double meanings without realising to it. Additionally to that, sometimes, I had added a change of tone or body language to my words and made it sounded like the other meaning to the intended meaning mine. Out of curiosity, some of my peers actually did asked with I meant and they had feedback to my behaviour.

Being too elaborate in my means of communication had brought lesser communication to those who might not really my true intention to the words I said, thus there were a lot of misunderstanding.

In my opinion, in communications, we should always learn to communicate to others in the means of the understanding of the listener. In that way, there would be effective communication. Just like cells, they had learnt to communicate through the ‘language’ that the receiver would be able to understand and thus respond to it; by transmitting signalling molecules to receptors that trigger a respond.

This is so RP~

RJ: When did you realised / how do you know that you're an RP student?

I guess the routine life everyday in Republic Polytechnic had affected much of us and had changed how RP student had think and react towards everyday life. Here are some stories to share.

There was this day where a few of my secondary school friends, inclusive and exclusive of RP students, had met out for lunch. We were sharing about our recent updates in each of our boy-girl relationship. Coincidently, it was the turn where one of our non-RP friends started sharing his problem he encountered. The minorities of the group, which consist of some RP students went, “So, what we know, what we don’t know and what we need to find out?”

A few friends of mine and I, were planning for a gathering barbeque. There were ideas everywhere and we were having fun about the activities we named. As the discussion gets more and more heated, I stood up and mentioned, “Okay! We need a leader and a scribe. Start jotting down the points.”

I was travelling in the Mass Rapid Transmit (MRT) on one of the non-schooling days then. Along the North-East line, when the train finally stopped at Yew Tee, among the discussion of the crowd I heard, “Hey! You know when our next UT date is?”

I guess the life of being a Republic Polytechnic student is getting into our head. Everywhere we go, we seem to relate our life towards what we had learnt. Just like what we had encounter, we relate to our knowledge from RP. I guess, we need a break!

Understand nuts

RJ: What is the most difficult concept to grasp today? Did you manage to overcome it?

In today’s problem statement, the laboratory session expose us to handling data collection. Not only in Chemistry, even in other subjects, as mentioned by the facilitator, like enzyme and substrate, has relevance to application of the learning today.

After understanding how data can be collected, we would be moving on the plotting of the data we collected and understand the concept today. Comes to science, different from maths, there are more steps to calculate before deriving the graph.

Formula were applied everywhere in the Excel Spreadsheet and answers were poorly labelled. And when there were errors at the end of the lesson, we realised that we had nothing but just numbers everywhere.

To improve such data collection again, we should had written down some of the common formula and also the steps in deriving the answers. Just like maths, she should also clearly label the answers.