I am Dayang Nor Atika binti Johari@Juhri, a first-year student currently doing my second semester in International Studies. One of the courses that I take this semester is Political Science. In Dr. Mpawenimana Abdallah’s Political Science class, I learned a fair amount of material. In his class, we discussed basic political concepts together with their examples and we analyzed past and current political affairs pertaining to the individual's and groups’ political behavior. Furthermore, we reviewed different roles played by the political institutions. For instance, the role of the state and government. Moreover, this course allowed me to understand basic concepts, political processes, international politics, political institutions, and the relationship among governments. Going through the Political Science class for about five months made me realize how valuable this class is as it has taught me the significance of politics to the world which helped me to develop thoughts and ideas that I never think of before. In short, this course has improved me not just as a student of International Studies but also as a person.
It is hard to believe that Political Science class came to an end and I actually get through it. I have always been worried about Political Science because I have little knowledge of politics compared to my other classmates. Before I take this course, I knew that Political Science is one of the branches of social science and in this course, I am going to be exposed to government institutions and also political behavior. As for myself, I knew a few political concepts such as authority, legitimacy, and power but I did not fully understand these concepts. I read about various political ideologies and political parties before, but it was still unclear to me. Thus, I thought that this course would be very helpful for me to expand my political knowledge. I knew that this course will be a challenge for us since I heard that Political Science is difficult due to a great deal of complicated concepts and terms that we have to learn.
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On the other hand, I think that I have expanded my political knowledge after taking this course as I am able to grasp a vast amount of information just by attending the lectures. To illustrate, I learned about the principles of constitutional design which are vagueness, long-standing traditions, amenability, and concentration of power. Aside from that, I have a better understanding of the functions of elections. For instance, one of the functions of election is as a means to hold governments accountable to the governed. Political Science also taught me how powerful the agents of socialization such as family and mass media in influencing political socialization in society. All in all, I learned how to be a good member of society through this course. Thereupon, as an International Studies student, the amount of knowledge I obtained after taking this course is making me feel that I have learned so much more than before and I believe that it would be very useful for me as it prepares me with a sturdy foundation before stepping into the second year.
After all, just like any other course, this course is not just about attending the lectures for the sake of fulfilling the 80% attendance requirement. We were given two assignments and Dr Mpawenimana Abdallah instructed us to form a group of seven. The first assignment was a written report on a country’s political issues. For my group, we chose to write about Finland. We distributed the parts of the report accordingly. Personally, I did not have any problem getting the assignments done since I was in charge of writing the introduction of the report. However, we did encounter some minor problems in which we had two international students from Japan in our group. In particular, they did not know how to do citations and references. It was also quite difficult for us to explain the whole thing to them since they are still adapting to the education system here. Additionally, both of them were willing to give their full cooperation with us. Fortunately, we solved these problems.
Next, our second assignment was a group presentation. We were asked to present past or current political issues in Malaysia. My group decided to present “The Fall of Barisan Nasional in the 14th General Election”. Before the presentation, all of us had a few discussions pertaining to our chosen topic. In the discussion, we mostly talked about what were the major factors that constituted the triumph of Pakatan Harapan and the fall of Barisan Nasional in the General Election. We did some research and we read a few articles on our topic. Consequently, we ended up with five major factors contributing to the fall of Barisan Nasional. These written reports and group presentation assignments gave me an exquisite experience because I get to share my opinions and thoughts from a political perspective. Although in the beginning I was overwhelmed with the amount of workload given since I was involved in Unimas Chess Club where I am the treasurer, I managed to get it done just in time with proper time management. Besides that, another challenge that I faced was being heavily distracted by the internet, particularly social media. This happened probably because I am always with my smartphone. Thankfully, I took an active approach to prevent it from distracting me. I put my smartphone in a place where I could not reach and sometimes, I let the battery drain so I would not be able to use my smartphone. Eventually, taking these baby steps helped me to focus more on completing my assignments. In short, there were various challenges that I faced when working on the assignments, but I found alternatives to tackle these challenges head-on without feeling defeated.
There are a few things that I like about the class. Firstly, I love the class environment because most of the time, everyone was quieter compared to other classes. I think this is because we were constantly told by Dr. Abdallah to keep quiet because he wanted us to give our full attention while he was teaching. To be honest, I enjoy silence especially when I am in class because it keeps me at peace to absorb the information delivered by the lecturer and Political Science class was the class where I get to stay focused because of the quiet environment. Secondly, I actually became closer to a few of my classmates during this class because I was in the same group as them for the assignments. I talked to people whom I only know their names before, and it was a pleasing experience. I remember being told numerous times by my parents to “talk more with your classmates” or “be friends with your classmates” since I am not the kind of person who will approach others first. These are the things that I finally worked on over the period of five months in Political Science class.
Thirdly, what I like about this class is the group presentation. For this semester, Political Science was the only class that required us to do a presentation. I realized the importance of presentation because it prepares us with communication skills. I personally love doing presentations. This could be because of my interest and involvement in public speaking and debate since I was in secondary school. I enjoy speaking in front of others because it is the only time where I can improve my presentation skills although I get nervous sometimes. Meanwhile, in class, I prefer to stay quiet. Lastly, I like Dr. Abdallah’s enthusiasm and punctuality. He was always on time for class. Besides, he is supportive as he always gave feedback and advice on ways for us to boost our grades, especially after the mid-semester examination. He kept on encouraging us to do well in our final examination by saying “It is going to be easy” and that we will be able to answer the questions with ease if we put effort more to study Political Science. He also made a deal where he will give us an “A” only if we score 35 out of 40 marks in the final. Generally speaking, he wanted us to do our best in our studies and most importantly we have to score good marks in our final examinations.
By the same token, there were also things that I dislike about the class. First and foremost, I did not like the evening class. The class begins at 4 pm and ends at 7 pm. Not only the lectures were held in the evening, but it was also a three-hour lecture. I would be lying if I say I could concentrate for three hours straight because as a human being and a student, I could not endure long hours of lecture. Especially on Tuesday, we had two classes before Political Science which were Modern Economics and Introduction to Malaysian Social History respectively. At the same time when I felt sleepy, I was also hungry. This added up to my lack of focus in class.
Second, I did not really enjoy the teaching method which was solely going through slides. It would be fun if Dr. Abdallah implements a variety of teaching materials. As an example, he could show us videos or animations related to the topics we learned. He could also do real-time quizzes using online platforms such as Kahoot in class to make the class more interesting and invest students in the course material. Moreover, this will contribute to an increase in student participation in class as participating in class is important to develop our communication skills as well as improve our comprehension of the Political Science material. Lastly, I dislike the people who went out during the class for a long period of time as I find this behavior disrespectful. I believe that they had their reasons, but I hope this will not happen again in the future.
For this course, I would like to give some constructive suggestions. First, it would be better if we are given attainable goals. In light of the aforementioned, most of the time students like challenges. Challenges serve as a force to push themselves as they will work more than the bare minimum to achieve the goals given by the lecturer. Doing this, as time goes by, will allow the lecturer to see how much they are improving. Second, I suggest a change of scenery. The seminar room in Central Teaching Facilities was great for learning but sitting in the seminar room made the lectures seem a bit tiresome. The lecturer should give us a chance to get out of the seminar room in order to revive the learning process in general because a new setting is what you need to prompt and propel the students to stay motivated. Lastly, the lecturer should spare some time to do a sharing session with students. This allows students to share their concerns or struggles which may be draining their motivation for the course. Sharing their problems enables the lecturer to get a glimpse of what exactly goes wrong within the course of study. After that, the lecturer can figure out the solutions to help students grow while seeing them get more out of their studies and get where they want to be.
Finally, in this reflection, I would like to share my hopes for the final examination which is just around the corner. As a student, I always wanted a good grade for every course that I take. This includes a Political Science course. Throughout the months before the mid-semester examination, I had my ups and downs, but it did not prevent me from doing well in my mid-semester examination. Getting 16.5 out of 20 marks for my mid-semester examination was beyond my expectation and it was totally an incredible relief. After considering my mid-semester examination result, I aspire to do better and score an “A” in the final examination. I have been working towards getting an “A” since I first heard terrifying stories from my friends saying that scoring an “A” is impossible for this course. I would say that studying Political Science is stressful at times as such learning new terms and concepts. Nevertheless, I am convinced that it is what makes me improve my knowledge. In a nutshell, I will give my best shot in the final examination although I am bad at writing essays and I will strive to prove that I can get an “A” for Political Science.
All in all, I gained a lot of new knowledge alongside incredible opportunities through this class. Thank you so much for giving me the chance to be one of your students.
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