2017 Semester 1

This was taken at UQ's Law Library when we were having an Education group working session.

It was just another semester at UQ, but different. Before reviewing this semester, I wish to backtrack a little bit and talk about some background.

I'm a Geoscience major, but this semester I did Chinese, Education, Communication, and Psychology being the only science subject. The reason was that I've finished my compulsory major courses and having only electives and two science courses left. Since it's highly likely that I will have to be qualified as a teacher in the future, I took all these courses just to learn something about teaching, language and communication. And Psychology was only a compulsory course that I reluctantly took at the beginning but it turned out to be one of the best.

Chinese - one of the worse courses I've had. Honestly I can't understand why would I take this course at the beginning. Maybe I was trying to learn something about teaching Chinese. But during the whole semester the class felt like a waste of time. Maybe I learnt one or two things about translation (and how the course sucks). The exam tested nothing about class content (it teaches translation techniques and some translation history etc.), instead they just asked you to translate English into Chinese. It's related, but it's based on your previous knowledge and vocabulary.

Education was a challenging course, not intellectually, but challenging for hard work and discipline. We were required to do tons of readings, with tutorials and weekly tests on the previous week's reading. The most challenging thing for me was the 40 minutes group presentation. 3 people 20 minutes of presentation and 20 minutes of class activity/ interaction. I put a lot of energy and attention to this, yet the result was disappointing. Overall, the course content was very informative; it made me thinking about teaching in Australia and the situation and condition of Australia's education.

Communication was the blurry course in between the good course and the worse (Chinese). This course focused on intercultural communication, which of course talked about different cultures. I didn't attend most of the lectures except two (a random one and an in class exam), because it's just not that interesting to me. Again, this course required us to present a workshop as assignment - the most dreadful form of assessment. Other than the presentation, I can't remember much from this course.

Psychology - I've always been a little afraid of, as I've felt too close to it that I might be consumed by it. I feared that one day I might become a psychologist and face mental patients all the time so eventually I become a patient as well. And I also feared that I might completely dislike psychology after taking it. Anyways, I finally took on psychology as my last choice. At first I wasn't quite into it because my attentions were drawn away to all the presentations and shitstorms from Education and Communication. It wasn't until the weeks before exams when I visit the content for the fucking first time and really start to comprehend and appreciate the beauty of psychology. Very soon I realize the connection between psychology and philosophy and science. Psychology is a modern extend of philosophy with scientific basis. Learning about how the brain works fascinates me. I was totally intrigued.

All in all, it was an okay semester. My final results were not too bad, though disappointing because my expectation was higher. I meet new people every semester and this semester was no different. Most people I met in the past few months were pretty cool, but there was just this one girl who's a Chinese patriot; she's so sensitive about topics on China, which disgusted me. Other than this, I don't have any other attitude towards this semester.

Recently, I've been playing a lot of World of Warcraft. I guess things are just like the old days now when I sit in front of a computer screen for 12 hours a day, and only go out looking for food. Since I'm 23 already and should be contributing to the society, most of you would judge the shit out of me, but well I really enjoy playing games which is way better than anxiety and stress. Judge me all you want, but I still have some time that I can waste and enjoy.

The new upcoming semester is exciting. I've planned it out to be all of my favorite subjects: Japanese, Philosophy and Psychology. I'm looking forward to a time when I merely enjoy studying and forget about grades. But I'll have to pass of course.

#RealistsJournal #Summary