PBLs

Had the 9th PBL today. I absolutely don't like it. Not a single bit. I went to school with such a bad mood, thinking about sitting in the lab with a bunch of coursemates who are sometimes a bit all too dominating just gave me the reluctance to even enter that lab. What's more, I couldn't find my necklace! Where the heck is it?! My neck feels so odd... and empty...

Anyways, in case you haven't known what PBL is, it stands for Pubic, Breast and Libido. Nope. Just kidding. It's actually Problem Based Learning. We would be given a trigger at first, of a case to be discussed. We are required to read through the trigger, find out whatever we can learn from the trigger, and jot them down. The second trigger would come in, as a continuation of the same case, where there would be more to be learnt. By then we would be able to see where the case is going, and the whole idea would come in. But nope, we still need to pick out the learning objectives and jot them down. By the end of the session, there would be a whole pile of learning objectives, and we would need to go home and look them up. The 2nd session would be the time when we would go back and discuss what we found. That's how we learnt from the case given, the so called Problem Based learning. Yada yada. Bullshit.

Given a choice, I'd opt for lecture. A good lecturer with humour that could keep me away from dozing off is just what I need. Screw them having the ideas lectures are useless as students tend to sleep in class. That happened alright. Thanks to the proffessor who delivered the lecture without obvious key points, and kept on beating around the bush, and in the end everyone came out as blur as the ostrich. Even if she's the internationally noted person, it sucks quite big when it comes to teaching us. We're the undergrads for Christ's sake, not master or PhD students! Hinting - the lectures on lymphoma. Blardy hell. Sometimes, it's the content of the lecture itself. Hinting - diabetes melitus. Give us something we haven't know, neuroanatomy for instance. We couldn't make the heads or the tails, but at least I'm not sleeping.

So anyway, the supervisor that came into our PBL today was a male lecturer from the department of medical microbiology. I couldn't recall if he took any lectures before, but he's quite familiar. He started off giving small talk, warming us up, and asked if we find PBLs any useful.

Damnit can't you all see? No one here, or at least half of us here, or in the whole batch I'm sure, agreed PBLs aren't helping. We wasted our time looking up for informations, reading through some lengthy articles for that ONE SENTENCE of worthy information, and spent the whole weekend trying to organize our points of discussion. Just give me that blardy notes, or erm, I'm happy enough if they give us time to have our own self reading. It's even better. I have since last week, find neuroanatomy pretty interesting. Difficult one it is, but with more time given, I don't see any problem understandting the whole tube that control your body. *sniggering*

But ah well, being lecturers and all, he started to tell us that they are putting in a lot of efforts in the PBL programme. Complaints are threw upon us undergrad students for not being able to communicate well when we graduate. Yada yada. So all these discussions are designed as a training ground, so that we would be able converse well in the future. Yada yada.

Before the PBL session even started, I told one of the group-mate, YA, that I would stay mute today as well. Screw them PBLs, I hate PBLs, I just don't find anything in this programme that could ever attract me. Perhaps there are some - EYE-CANDY, but then again, to have eye-candy in the discussion group is total impossible. We're stuck with the same old bunch for PBLs and Labs and ward rounds. And to have a good pretty or handsome lecturer coming in, hmmm, that's once in a blue moon. YA was surprised I was so blardy quiet the last session, two weeks ago. Throughout the entire discussion, I didn't say a single thing.

"Bong, you are very quiet today. You shouldn't. You know you're assessed on your participation right?" the previous supervisor commented. "You have any solid reasons for not participating? You seemed like just here to occupy the space. If you don't want to participate, you don't need to come."

Blardy hell, occupied the space?! I can sooooooo slap her! I was angry back then alright, but I was too nice a person to throw my 3 year old shoes at her face. Blardy talkative chaps in the group talked non-stop, and never let me interupt or join! Okay okay, so there are some techniques of cutting into the discussions, that I should at least make the initiative to participate. Yea yea, I was just plain lazy to join back then. Discussions were on kidney infection stuff, which, is so totally boring.

And so, this was what I said. Softly... "a.. ah... I... pain..." while pointing to my throat.

The supervisor was looking at me with this eye as if I was a thief who crawled into her wardrobe to tape his bed actions with her husband at night. The eyebrows was skewed so obviously I'm sure she strained those muscles on her forehead. When I told KK about my lame creative excuse when i got home, he laughed so loud and said "I'm sooo going to try that next time round!"

But then again, that's not the whole point. I still don't like PBLs. Why were we brought up this way?! I blame it on the blardy dirty politics. And those dirty politicians for all that matter. "You have more A1s in SPM, you can get the JPA scolarships."- so told by some blardy minister back when I was in form 5.

Anyways... the PBL session today went well. I talked. Was pretty proactive in fact. Maybe it's the small talk before everything started. It's been a while any of them lecturers warm up with us students. How cold the whole session can be when they just came in and sat at one corner, with that monotonous voice "You know the drill, so start." Blardy hell, I don't even know who the supervisor was! Start how? Start now?!

Still. Ugh!!! Where the heck is my necklace?! It's not in my khaki bag! Couldn't possibly slipped out from the bag in Lex's place or his car. But I'm asking him to look it out for me. My precious necklace... Where are you? *sobs*

Oh yea, the pics are taken during the discussion. Groupmate bought Harshey's today. Chocolate anyone?