my life, basically.

Here's some introductory background information before I start with this post:

I hated, no, loathed civil engineering and anything that comes along with it. My 2 years in technical school had only taught me of how bad I am with it that I spent the first and a half year crying to my parents so that they'll transfer me to some other school. Well, they didn't and consequently I messed up on my SPM. Pretty bad. 

Fortunately, I managed to get accepted into UiTM Law Foundation Programme with my bare minimum results and imagine having to announce my pathetic result in a lecture hall filled with 60~ students who scored nothing but flying colors. To say that I felt inferior is an understatement. But being there, alone is my strive to compensate my past and if we're in the same boat, this is the perfect post for you to read.

We shall start.

First off, if you're not good in English, or lets just say your English is mediocre like me, you are going to be fine. Fine in this sense is that you will survive. I am someone who grew up learning English solely by reading and listening to songs and I totally understand about wrong pronunciations, difficulty in expressing yourself verbally and so on. Some people are lucky enough to grow up in a family that uses the language on daily basis but I'm simply not one of them. So yeah, if you're like me, a dictionary app in your phone might come in handy. Its okay if you don't fully understand the lecture because 1. you can always ask your friends later or 2. go clarify with your lecturer after class and they will be more than happy to assist you. But this doesn't mean you don't need to brush up on your language skill because you will need it to answer your papers, to ace your muet and for English language subjects throughout the course (4 to be exact). Finding a friend that's helpful and supportive can also alleviate the burden. I met my best friend Irdina, who always give me this one assuring nod whenever I speak in front of the class and she reminded me that after all, English is a skill not a talent.

Another thing is that there will be lots of assignment that involves speaking in front of the class and what really helped me was that I prepared the whole speech text a week or two prior to the due date and simply memorize them. Word by word IF you can. How? Just memorize and repeat to yourself, one paragraph a day and eventually you'll get the hang of it. Now, this is really important but never stress yourself too much over it if you're doing this method. Don't freak out if you missed a sentence, simply improvise or add the missing sentence anywhere that fits. I did this method in semester 1 and I got better at it by the time I started semester 2 and I was able to memorize my speech a day or two before presenting it. I know some might think that this is absurd. Lets just say that it is, in fact, an absurd method but it's not impossible. I think we tend to underestimate the ability of our brain to absorb information. If you can study the whole syllabus of a subject before an exam, what made you think that you cant memorize a 1000 words speech for a week? This method can help to devoid of any stuttering or filler words during your presentation. Just try it once and if it doesn't suits you, I'm sorry lol. 

So basically, 1. Don't let your insecurity get in the way. 

2. Find a helpful friend.

3. Memorize your speech text (if you want).

Secondly, i'm gonna tell you about how to study for law subjects. I didn't excel in my first semester because I made these mistakes which I beg you to not repeat. 1. I studied waaay to early. I finished reading every chapters for the 3 law subjects (out of love and excitement) ONE MONTH after I got into Dengkil. One month. Rest assured I forgot almost everything the next month. Well, although it is important to study early but it's also essential to note that studying way too early is not that good. Because you can trick yourself into believing that you already mastered the topic but in fact, you already forgot half of it. And also, you'll get super lazy or in other word burnout as the exam approaches, ergo you'll end up studying half-hardheartedly for the subject. 

Next, do your own notes. Pretty notes. That doesn't necessarily mean that your notes must have swirls, clouds or even colors in it because if you're like me, a lazy ass person, using too much different colors in your notes is a tedious task. And it confuses me sometimes. But that is besides the point. POINT IS, a pretty note is one that you can understand. My sister's tips on making notes is that when you do your notes, tell yourself that this will be shared to the whole school. So you'll end up with a clear and concise notes which are capable to make other people and also yourself to understand it. This will be super helpful when you're studying in the last minutes. Most people that I know do their notes by extracting the important parts of a slide or a book word by word. 

Well, how I do my notes, although its nowhere near perfect, is that first, I read the slide/book, one fraction at a time and I translate it into my own simple sentence. Once, I saw my friend wrote somewhat of a story out of it and that might work too. But again, im a lazy ass and I hate seeing long sentences of my own handwriting (mind you, my handwriting is darn ugly). So, I'll extract the important parts and translate it into a very very simple sentence. I can assure that my sister's tips works because I shared my notes with my housemates and they liked it because they said that its easy to understand. 

Talking about housemates, my housemates played a huge role in my studies. Initially, I thought I'll never benefit from a study group, having experiences of study groups that ended up being a 2 hour gossip session. Well, my housemates proved me wrong. During sem 1's finals, we decided to sit in a circle and one person will explain about a topic, highlight the keywords and repeat together until everyone memorizes it. It works like a charm but you got to do this maybe a day or two before the test because then, everyone will feel the pressure to take it seriously. We did it for every subject in both semesters' finals and im forever thankful for that. Apart from that, my housemates and I teamed up to make 'pretty notes' for CTU. One topic per person and eventually we compiled it together to create sort of a simple handbook. 

Moreover, im 100% sure you will end up with tons of past years questions. Just do it. (Nike pls sponsor me) The earlier the better and one question a day is enough. Don't push yourself too much but do push yourself a bit. Am I making any sense? The thing is, the question repeats itself. When you answered one question, there's likelihood for it to be repeated. You'll understand what I say when you reviewed the papers. So, do it and get it checked by your lecturer or your friends who consulted with the lecturer (don't trust 100% of your friends' answers) and lastly, memorize the key points. ILAC or whatever, you'll learn this sooner or later. If you're done with the papers I can assure you atleast a B+ or an A- is already secured. 

Lastly, but the probably the most important part, please make an extra effort in everything that you do. The one thing that the lecturers there may or may not have told you is that they want to see your effort. So in my LW016 course, I got 14/30 for my test. I cried of course because I really loved the subject and I studied hard for it. I even memorized everything on the slides. EVERYTHING. So I went to see my lecturer to ask what's wrong with my paper. He told me that I was wrong to treat the slides as my textbook. Its merely a guidance and you start from there. My paper in that test have key points (which are the only information in the slides regarding that particular question) and no elaboration. So I asked him, how to know what's the elaboration since there's none in the slides. He said; "Google is your friend," And that, lads and gents, is what that helped me to get that extra marks for every subjects after that. You need to give your paper that extra 'something' that makes your paper stands out from the rest. In my limited time, I managed to gave reference to cases that are not mentioned by others, information that are not in the slides, more elaborations and so on. Whatever works. They just wanna see your effort. But please bear in mind that you do this effort AFTER you're pretty sure you mastered the topic, as if you're putting the cherry on top. 

That's all I can say as my result is not that awesome. Its just that I made mistakes and I learnt from them and I am now merely sharing to you about my learning process.

So basically,

1. Dont study too early.

2. Pretty notes.

3. Study groups might help.

4. Do past years.

5. Give extra effort in everything. 

And lastly, about friends and group assignments. Well, I cant say much because I didn't have lots of friends and I didn't spent my time hanging out at anjung whatsoever. If you feel inferior having average SPM results then fret not as no one gives a shit about it anymore and if you feel superior having awesome results, just don't. Because in university, everyone is back at square one especially in law course. No one is smarter than the other and no one is more stupid than the other. What matters is how much effort you put. This is what i wished someone would tell me as I got disheartened by my limited English proficiency at the beginning of semester 1.

But anyway, please please please don't get involved in any types of drama when exams are around the corner as I saw it happened to my friends and how it badly affected their result. For group assignments, well, it's the best time for you to get to know your classmates and while drama is sometimes cannot be averted, just get the work done and over with. My friend talked about these stuff in his blogspot and check it out if you want. Its very insightful. Here's the link. 

That's all I guess. Thanks for making it this far. Hope it benefits you someway, somehow.

Oh, and here's my sem 1's result. I told you I messed up on my law subjects lol. CSC, just buy the damn book. If you can, you want to and you dont feel like passing around one book, 2 days before the exam. CTU, no comment. lol. ELC091, Its soo confusing. You'll get what I mean.

(Disclaimer: Im not in anyway trying to brag or whatnot, these results doesn't matter to me anymore as Im done with foundation. Just showing proof for my 'learning process' haha)

One fine day, somewhere in September, zulaika, ally, shafiq and I had involuntarily placed in a group to participate this one poster competition, apparently hosted by The Star newspaper. Being the lazy us, we delayed it until the very last minute, and later sat together at some coffee shop in Sunway Putra Mall and discussed everything.

Truth be told, none of us really knew what to do. I didnt participated the briefing talk because I was in a chess competition while my other friends didnt really paid that much attention in the lecture held by The Star. Couldnt blame them tho, it sounded boring. 

Anyway, we managed to come up with something and eventually the poster was sent to the star. After that, we didnt think much about it because, well, who knew we would go this far when we literally discussed everything in a short span of time, and zulaikha (with her amazing photoshop skill) went ahead and did the poster in like- a day. Yep, we procrastinated soo much that we made the poster a day before it was supposed to be submitted. 

Weeks later, Pn. Asiah came to us and said the poster was in the top 6. We had also won the merit award (got 25/20 rm kfc voucher) and we had to do a skype interview session later on friday that week. We prepared for it, zul n i came to school at nights to do preliminary preparations (which were not really useful)

During the interview, of course, all of us were freaking out. None of us had ever done this interview thing. We did it in the pc room at school, with pn asiah and pn khairiah monitoring us on projector, careful enough not to be seen in the camera. So we sat, waited for the call and alas, a star representative came up on the screen and introduced herself. 

Our legs were literally shaking under the table, and i was momentarily grateful that she couldnt see us fixating in our seats cus mayn, my heart couldnt beat any faster. She asked a few short questions which I couldnt recall, and fortunately, we managed to answer them quite well. If anyone whos reading this is thinking about participating this contest later, please note that the interviewers wanted to see 1. how well can u communicate in english and 2. ur team work. 

So, help ur team mates, like what we did is, i noticed my friend Ally, didnt speak much during the interview so i asked him like "ally tell us more abt badminton" that sort of stuff and with that, each of us managed to have the same amount of points to talk abt during the interview.

Me n zul tot we did really bad and we were really sad after the interview ended. REAL sad. we went ahead n book a grab car right after everything was over, and bought ourselves nutella cakes at secret recipe while going on n on abt how bad we were during the interview.

much to our surprise, we ended up in the top 3!! the interview was a success and we were qualified for the final round. which was the most dreadful thing ever- to present our poster, with a powerpoint and a 1 min video about it in front of a large audience.




This is where i messed up, i asked the star representative whether we were given a time limit and she said theres no time limit. so for the questions asked after our presentation, i was too carried away and i said unnecessary stuff that made our presentation too long and apparently the judges didnt like it. We did great tho during the presentation, no stuttering, made the audience laughed, and finished it in 5 mins (the time limit).

I remember scanning the audience while i was talking and saw cikgu azlan. He gave me a convincing nod and after we ended our powerpoint presentation. He was the one who clapped the loudest. Shout out to puan leela, who came to see us to give moral support and I thought it was the most thoughtful deed ever.

After they announced the winner, a principal of some school i didnt remember came to one of my friend and told us "You didnt won the first place, but you guys won a place in my heart." Yep, we did that good. and a star representative came to me and said "Asal u guys tak menang?? Haihh.. patutnya menang.. takpelah try again" (unfortunately were in form 5 alrdy)





We ended up in the second place. Its not that bad, we got a 1000 sen heng voucher each, 50 ringgit kfc voucher each and we were on the newspaper 2 times lol. After all, we didnt won the judges but we won the audience. Its all about the experience we gained, a valuable one for sure.

Thanks for reading. Hope it benefits you in some way.