Musings...
As you can tell from the session title, this will be the last post from The TWC Muse. It's been quite a roller coaster ride - ups and downs, corkscrews, back-flips and high-velocity, no-nonsense workloads but all in all, this has been one of the courses where things are taught but not memorized, but rather, these things and insights are internalized - to be kept safely in the back of the mind and not to be forgotten. I took most of the lessons and discussions as words of conventional wisdom mixed with general knowledge and a whole load of insight/foresight for the future. In its entirety, I definitely enjoyed this course as it was not fully academic in the typical Singaporean 'study-hard-get-good-grades' sense but it was challenging for the mind. Not to say that typical academic courses never challenged the mind but they do so in a more painful, agonizing way in which students painstakingly ingest copious amounts of heavy text and are forced to regurgitate these lumps of information onto tests, examinations and papers. To me, this conventional method of academia is treated much like a chore to be forgotten once the module is over. Fortunately, T.W.C has not been like this for me.
Each session was insightful and full of fruitful discussions where I was able to learn from Prof as much as I was able to learn from my peers through discussions of varying, uninhibited viewpoints. As the class was rather small, we were able to get acquainted with each other without much trouble, easing up any tensions or ice that crystallized our thoughts and words - this was a very important step in maintaining an environment where discussions and opinions are encouraged and I feel that this was the start of what made this course fun. As everyone was able to voice their opinions on matters without doubt or hesitation, it became much like a forum where students posit their ideas and everyone brought a little bit of what they had to the table. Although sometimes what we brought to the table was rather off-topic or not appetizing, Prof continued to make sure that the discussions would end in a fruitful manner or he would personally direct them. This form of class participation, I felt, was the truest and most effective as people could really learn from each other instead of 'fruitcakes' just simply spouting off nonsense to earn class participation points. Excuse my french.
Although I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions and the course in general, I found that at times, the course workload was abit heavy. With weekly blog entries and readings that were sometimes long enough to induce comas, coupled with an individual presentation component, an individual topical review paper and also a group web-based report, I was sometimes overwhelmed. However, it must be said that Prof has been rather lenient with the deadlines for a lot of these assignments, giving us some time to breathe in the process and balancing out the bulky workload. This is just my honest opinion of the course.
A key take-away I took away from this course (yes, pun intended) was the insight to be able to grow and evolve with technology. As mentioned in the previous Musing, I was always just a leaf in the wind with technology as I felt I could not do anything to influence or change it. However, with the insight from this course, I found that it is important to want to understand technology and see how it has transformed and will transform life in the past, present and future. Because with this insight, you can be more in touch with everything around you. Sounds abit philosophical but let me explain. As technology has permeated almost every aspect of our lives, we have to do more than just embrace it, we should take a step forward and understand it as well. By understanding technology, we can see how and why alot of things in everyday life are created. More than knowing the purpose of technology's existence, we can understand the future of what technology can and will bring to our lives. This would definitely be the greatest take-away from T.W.C that I can apply for myself in the here and now, and most definitely in the future.
Personal rating for this session: 9.8989/10
So Long Dear Muse,
James G14
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