My 3 Principles in Learning

Being a student, I tend to find that there are three principles that I hold up high. 1st, respect your teachers regardless of how annoying he/she could, how old and quite sometimes a senile fellow, getting confused at some point or just some random uptight person. Because at the end of the day, he/she is the one that had the knowledge and whether you like it or not, you are the student.

You might hate the person being the teacher, getting at the receiving end during lectures, sometimes had to solve the problems at the front when he/she actually knew that you had no idea on how to solve but purposely called you up front. Or how you seem to score in the exam but never receive praise on your effort but get comment on how you can achieve better than this. Or perhaps the one that seem to favour certain student over others, perhaps the brainy ones, the pretty ones, the lickspittle. And you seem to be the blip in his radar, sometimes best being an unknown in his class until the end of the semester (owh if you reach this level, you can skip the class anytime you want, this is heaven haha).

But truth be told, you just have to respect their way of teaching. If he/she is good at what they do, then good for you. But if they are as bad as their attitude, you just have to endure the torment and be patient. Because you don’t have the luxury to choose who or how they will teach you. It is up to you to meet the challenge. If they raise the bar higher, you jump higher. It is simple as that.

And at times, they will teach you valuable lesson in life. Lesson that you sometimes won’t find in any other classes or lectures that you attend. I don’t know how to put it into words, or find the perfect example, but I’m pretty sure you know what I’m talking about.

2nd, uphold your place of learning to the highest point even when at times, people seem to condemn your learning institution as crap, of how disorganised or how dysfunctional certain department is, of how at times the organisation seemed to embezzle student’s money (OK, I hear this quite a lot actually). Yes at times, these organisations do suck. Big time, trust me. I have been at the receiving end. But perhaps not the whole time. Because I believe there are some people in the organisation that worked their arse off to try and make things works, even when things are falling apart. Aren’t we all human? We are not angel that is perfect to do every God’s will. So people are normal human that can't help themselves from making mistakes. The same people that work in these organisations make mistakes. Sometimes the mistakes don’t affect our daily lives but others people’s lives. Or perhaps sometimes the mistakes take the toll on us. And we end up having to take short semester for the sake of EAC. Owh this one sounds familiar isn’t it hehe.

But what do we do to help? No we don’t. We nag all the way, complaint here and there. Spreading false rumours when at times like this, the management try their best to settles the problems. If we are a good engineer, we tend to know that every logic had its flaws. Every design had its flaw. But we seem to be turned blind by our emotion and tend to blame everyone for this mistake. United we stand, divided we fall. You got to stick to your place of learning be it your school, your university, your kindergarten or whatever it is. Be proud of it and in due times you will remember that this is the place that get you started in life. This is the place where you learn, play, flirts, dated someone, grad with flying colours, grad with so-so result and still secured a job, or whatever life experienced you have there. Because those memories, those moments cannot be remake anymore. You only got one shot back there.

And finally the 3rd, what you give, you get back. Whatever knowledge that you seek and get, share it with the people around you, your friends, your peers & colleagues, subordinates. Anyone at all. Because by sharing you will not lose, but gain more and more afterwards. If not in this life, perhaps in the Afterlife. Like the popular saying, sharing is caring. Or whatever means that it may hold haha.

To you guys who just enrolled, please enjoy your campus life. Perhaps it might be different from other established universities but if I may say this, your campus life is on the making so it depends on how you want to create it. Other established universities had been developed for many years and some of it already had their culture, their way of campus life, so rigid that you had to adapt but here, in UTeM it is totally up to you. Owh and under the limit of the university rules of course.

So study hard and have fun while you still at it. Because we all did.