Darn Unity

Even with the final examinations drawing awfully near, and the semester in its final week of study, burdened with assignments yet to be completed before then, my beloved faculty decided to help us relax and reduce our pressure and tension by giving us:

A QUIZ.

Whoopee.

Strange that this quiz for beloved Curriculum and Pedagogy class seems to be so poorly publicized. All we received was an announcement on SPIN (student e-portal) asking all of us to attend the final lecture on the 13th of October in Dewan Budiman at 2pm where there will be a reflection of our micro-teaching, oh, and a QUIZ.
Nothing else mentioned, like how many marks were allocated, the format of the paper, nada.

I frantically searched my (very dusty) notebook where I had written notes for the class (when I successfully managed to stay conscious long enough to actually write) and lo and behold ! There was something about a quiz during the final week. I had written:

IMPORTANT !! QUIZ WEEK 14 (ESSAY) - 30%

wth.
Thirty-freaking-percent ????!!!! Purely essay ?????!!!!!!!!!!!! Alamak. I haven't even touched my books. Darn. >.< So began a few sleepless nights (well, sleep-deprived days really) of frantic, desperate, hopeless, mugging. I suddenly realized I had books I never knew I had. What great timing ! Just in time !

I also realized, unfortunately, that there were 36 methods of teaching all categorized real pretty with fancy names like Resitasi (Recitation) and Sumbang Saran (Brainstorming) described in excruciating detail. And yes, I needed to also translate all of it into English from Malay.
Methods in teaching, lesson plan formats, Bloom's Taxonomy, 10 views in integrating curriculum, National Education Curriculum, ways of effective teaching and learning, officialism, introducing a lesson, variations, explanation, techniques in questioning and everything else was pretty much stuffed into my brain, if I can use such a term.

I very nearly was on the verge of committing suicide.
Not really.
But very nearly though.

Everywhere I went I thought of the 6 levels of Bloom, the difference between critical and creative thinking skills, what the statement for the National Curriculum was.
Gan jeong betul.
Especially on D-Day.

All my previous classes before the quiz, I could not concentrate. We were talking about Broca's aphasia and Wernicke's aphasia and the corpus calossum in Psycholinguistics, but my mind was still on the 5 main reasons why teachers need to plan their lessons - in essay point form.

It came to the point where, I didn't really care whether I was finally ready or not, I could not stand the sight of that pink book again.
I had had enough.
I just wanted it over and done with.

We were finally seated, all of us. Most of us, like me, nervous and jittery. And very jumpy.

The question paper was handed out:

JAWAB SEMUA SOALAN DI BAWAH

1. Apakah yang anda faham tentang perpaduan?
2. Apakah masalah utama yang dihadapi dalam pengajaran mikro 10-12 minit?
3. Apakah kaedah yang anda fikirkan paling sesuai untuk pengajaran perpaduan? Nyatakan.


wth.
I slogged and mugged and had sleepless nights to answer questions that even my F5 brother can? Or anyone from any other course can, for that matter? On UNITY ??!! What is this, an essay writing competition in conjunction with Independence Day? Or wait, 1Malaysia? *grrrrrr*

Oh, and after I'd written a 1 page essay for each question, allotting about 10 marks for each, she told us that the entire quiz, all 3 essay questions that is, would give a total of 10% for our final marks.

Ten-freaking-percent.

I swear, I could curse real bad right now. Real bad. >.<