Do you feel enriched?

After the talk I just attended today, I managed to organize my thoughts on what about the induction programme irritated me so much.

No Value Whatsoever
What did I learn from the talks? What did I take away? NOTHING. The content of the talks, on speaking good English [duh], importance of Health Education and especially NE were all things that I knew before, and worse, in the case of NE, drummed into me so many times that I became utterly sick of the whole idea of it. [Talk about a case of overload]

But whatever the 'learning objectives' of the talk were, I do not know whether you can consider them fulfilled. Because I was so bored for the talks that I went to, that I became turned off the rest of the talks. Why would I attend something that adds no value to my knowledge, and that is so boring?

Some may give the reason that "Well, that's just you. Maybe there are others who are interested". Well, firstly, I don't see that my boredom affected their interest so much. Secondly, judging by the number of people who left the auditoriums to go to the toilets, the number of people who totally skipped the talks and the number of people who were reading magazines or using their laptops during the talks, I don't think there were that many people who were interested.

And by the way, most of us are university grads? I think we know the importance of speaking good English? *duh*

Lack of Organization
This was in more than one area. Firstly, the programmes themselves. Aside from one feedback session [arguably the most interesting part of the induction], one visit to an SAF camp, and another visit to ITE, the rest of the programmes were talks. What effort is there in organizing a talk? You decide on the topic, get one or two peoplew willing to do up a powerpoint presentation for you, and talk on the topic, book venue, submit approval, and TA-DAH! Done! Maybe that's why there are so many 'talks'.

Another very bad example of lack of organization is the attendance taking after the talks. Hordes of people crowding around tables, no queues, no signs to tell you what was on that table. I left the auditorium and what I saw were 2 crowds gathering outside, one presumably for primary school teachers, the other for secondary.

Here's the big question: Which table is which? There was no sign to indicate whether that table was for primary school teachers' attendances, or secondary school teachers, or maybe just drinks. You could only find out either by squeezing through the crowd, to look at the papers on the table, or you asked people who had already been there.

Worse, once you squeezed your way to the table, you had to look through the papers for your name, because the name lists were just dumped on the table. In other words, you still had to get up close, look and guess which paper had names starting with the same letter as yours, and if you had the wrong one, you had to squeeze past another group of people who were also trying to find their names.

And through all this, the staff in charge were just placidly standing behind the tables, watching us squeeze, groan, and flare our way through.

What kind of organization is this??? Is it such an incredible, original idea, to put up signs indicating where to go to sign your name? Is it too much effort on those poor, overworked, underpaid, admin staff to print out a few sheets of paper, and even put up some barricades or chairs so people knew where to queue and where to stand, and so that traffic would go smoothly? Apparently it was, because NONE of these simple, commonsensical ideas were done.

Through the squeezing, I did hear people remark wryly that this was like the Great Singapore Sale. I disagree. I've seen Robinsons Sales that were better organized.

So after going through all this, I'm expected to still be keen and eager and listening during the talk? Some people better start talking to the pedagogy people, because it seems they lack a few lessons in 'classroom management'.