Saturday, September 24, 2005

There but for the grace of God...

Hmm, so my previous post may have been a bit sombre and heavy on the ambiguity... I apologise, but seriously, you never know who reads this blog...

Which is frustrating in a way, because there are tons of things I want to comment on, I want to tell people, I want to let those outside know, but yet....... Well, most regular bloggers will know of all the fiascos regarding certain blogs...

So regarding the 'unpleasant incident'... I shall not mention it exactly. But it didn't do much help for most of the postgrads here, I had to say.

This past week or two after the one week 'break' has been a mash of major deadlines one after another. After one educational psychology essay had been passed up, most of us took a breath and jumped right into the next deadline waiting for us in English, another killer project.

Here's one HUGE drawback about the postgrad course here: It is essentially a crash course on teaching. Everything that took the diploma people to learn in 2 years, we cram into one. So everything is just rush, rush, rush, quick! Finish this paper! Finish that lesson plan! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!

Needless to say, all of us have very sour grape expressions when we see others like the dip holders and the PE pple having semblances of actual student lives......

So when that incident happened, you could sense a huge morale drop in our numbers. I think all of us were secretly thinking: That could have been me......




And really, it could have been. Already we get the feeling of being pushed on too fast for us to fully absorb whatever it is we are learning. We get deadlines thrown at us one after the other, esp the poor sods taking SK modules [which deserve another rant all by itself]. And we have NO student representation in the form of faculty clubs, or unions who are willing to speak on our behalf. [most likely because we are only here for a year]

And when you think that, "Hey, if NIE is supposed to be the holiday period before I get my permanent posting............."

Hm. There but for the grace of God......

3 comments:

Tym said...

I hear NIE's gotten more demanding since the late '90s, when I was there. But it's still not as siong as teaching itself ;)

cole. said...

what happened to that 'teach less, learn more' thingy? or it doesnt apply to NIE?

Tym said...

"Teach less, learn more" (aka TLLM in govermentspeak) doesn't mean "teachers work less, earn more" :)