Saturday, September 27, 2014

Week 4

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim

The time moves so fast that I don't even realize that I am already in my week 4 of masters!

With the workload and at the same time study load, I really have no time to wander and enjoy my weekends.. I don't even have time to study.. I have a very short of time since I can't be studying during my working hours.

The urge to study and do my assignment is killing me now. I already have 2 assignments that is due on next week, next day after Raya Haji break, and the other is on next week after. Right now, I am still studying the material for Week 2. And doing the slides for presentation this Tuesday. The bad thing about the assignment is, I don't even understand the content of the paper I was assigned to present. This is terribly bad. I feel useless. I tried to divert my attention from the paper by studying the other subject. At least I can start reading the paper again with fresh mind. I hope so.

The syllabus for both subjects is quite dense and it keeps me running to catch up the content of the study. The poverty and distribution subject doesn't take much of my time compared to the Development Theory and Practice by my handsome professor. Though it's hard but i know I will nail it. I won't give up until I have put my best effort which I know I haven't yet.

I pray to Allah to ease my studies. I wanna join the NGO so badly but I got contraints in terms of transport and time. I hope I can contribute to the society someday..

With Allah's willings of course. insya-Allah.

Betulkan niat Izzah.. insya Allah everything will be alright..





Thursday, September 11, 2014

Welcoming the second degree!

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim

I am now officially a full-time master student and research assistant/administrator/secretary/personal assistant. You name it all. I am now a multi-function research assistant with lots of workload. 

But it gives me experience that others may not have it. I learned a lot to manage grants, rules and regulations, how to deal with officers. The tasks sometime sounds simple, but it is really fussy to do it, it takes much of my time doing the admin work than my research. I know admin work won't take me anywhere, but I sort of like it since it doesn't take long before the task is settled. It's totally different with research. The process takes 1-2 years minimum, doesn't even take into account the writing part. I am still learning to be a good writer, cause I know writing is something that you can practice to make it perfect. It's just a matter of time.

Just finished 1st week of classes. For this semester, I have enrolled 2 subjects: 1 core and 1 elective subject.- Development Theory and Practice and Poverty and Distribution. The course really critical in a sense that it makes students think and argue a lot about the issues in development. And I wonder why most of Malaysians do not have intention to further in development studies. I wish I can do my PhD in Oxford and do case study in one of the Sub-Saharan African countries. It sounds simple yet it's really challenging since you're not deal with any organism, but human. Human is a very complex creature of Allah. They can interact with one another, they can change the info, they can cheat and think about the consequence/reasons for everthing. So for researchers, in order for the research not to have biased result, they usually do data collection by doing games so that they can actually manipulate the sample and lessen the interference.

Back to my study, I just finished first week of masters, but the tense is getting harder. The workload, the study and all those reading lists make me sick by just looking at it. 5 pages of long list of journal article is not much, right? Assignments, presentations, essays, response papers, term papers, etc. are not much. I just need to stop thinking about others and start to do my work. I know I can do this, I can score and I can manage it well. It's just a matter of time management - which I am still learning to handle it. 

But I am grateful that Allah has put me in this way, He makes my path smooth at the moment. Although the pressure is there, but I believe I can still handle it. I pray to Allah to make me persevere this challenge up till the end and graduated with Distinction. How I wish 2 years can fly just like that.

As my update is positively related to how busy I am, I will update this blog more frequent I think since I will be getting busier.

Currently, there is 1 paper in my pipeline (for my work) and besides the coursework that I need to fulfill, I also have to think about the other component of my masters which is dissertation part. I need to figure out my preferred supervisor, my areas of research and what I wanna do by the end of semester.

14 weeks sound not too long!

Have a nice weekend everyone. Even I know no one is reading this blog, but who cares.. I just wanna express myself in my own way, as for my future reference and I wish I could look back at my posts and say, I DID IT!!

insya Allah..