Recap of my semester 6 (3rd year 2nd sem), 75% done of degree, entering into final year...

Hey everyone, Ah Wong is here again. This time, Ah Wong is going to talk about the experience of mine in the previous semester, which is Sem 6 (3^rd Year, Sem 2). In this blogpost, it is going to be cover on the time frame within that semester and post-semester (emphasized more on what was special in that semester). Honestly, this is considering a kind of hasty blogpost in the last minutes prior of I start to have my internship.

            As usual of online learning medium, my Sem 6 was totally inherited with the same teaching mode as previous 2 semesters (namely Sem 4 and Sem 5). Hence, it is again same old routine to be at home amid this heightening Covid-19 cases in Malaysia until daily counts of 20k cases. However, what made my 3^rd year semester 2 to be slightly outstanding as previous semesters was that we as the penultimate student (now final year student) called to find a mandatory internship placement for our practical semester, 4^th year semester 1. Basically, that had sort of aggravated our burden in that semester mainly due to juggling with 2 aspects, which were finding an internship placement, and, of course academics.

            Speaking of finding for internship placement, many of us, the accounting student (I am citing example of accounting students because I, myself is an accounting student) were tend to seek after internships in the big 4, the highly rated, sought after, and 4 biggest in size Audit and Accounting firms. In many of ours thoughts, working in Big 4 is like winning a lottery strike or like a channel to be glamorous people. However, personally now I had none of that feeling already, so long as you get into any mid-size audit firms or big 10 will be fine too. This is because I think so long as we can get to learn from there and score a decent grade for practical semester will be enough already. Moreover, I feel the main reason for them to ‘die-die’ to want to get into big 4 is mostly of getting exposure and networks in those bigger firms in a bid to secure their future full-time job there. In short, basically this actually also the same concept to be apply on each and every of the firms, but different feeling exists when you are working in a relatively bigger firm than the smaller one.

After being long winded on the topic of big 4, let’s talk about the interview session before getting offer letter, in that semester I had been experiencing 2 types of interviews, such as virtual 1 to 1 interview, and digital interview. Well, the digital interview here is meant that the questions are given to the candidates and the candidates need to open camera and record themselves to answer the questions. Besides, it also required the candidates to write for short essays in that session. Such as tedious and challenging type of interview, I bet you guys will know it was from one of the big 4 firms. Yea, big 4 firms were kind of innovative and creative in selecting the right candidates by conducting this kind of selection and filtration. Some of those big 4 firms, even hosted a game to gauge their skill in the relevant subjects such as English, and Mathematics before the proceed with shortlisting the candidates for interview - in the mode of either virtually or phone call. I did not get any news from the majority of big 4 which I had applied for in that semester, but except for the one firm. That time the big firm had sent shortlisted email to me in order to prepare for the digital interview. However, I was sort of have a contradiction in my mind, since that time I had accepted an offer from a big 10 audit firm. Thus, I reluctantly attend for the digital interview, and as expected, that time I utterly talks incoherently and unprepared at all. Nonetheless, at least I took this as an experience to have an exposure on how the digital interview, or known as recorded video interview be like in the future job application.

I recalled I was among one of the earliest to settle internship application, in which I had done everything by the first half of that semester. So, I managed to pay more attention on my academic aspect such as in doing assignments. It was no doubt, basically, the process of doing group assignments in that semester were basically the same as previous semesters, which were mostly the same team members as before. However, I would like to highlight there were some subjects’ assignments asked students to present and teach a topic to all of the students in the class, I meant on the Microsoft Teams, as well as making report for that particular topic. The challenging part of doing this kind of group assignment was to find a relevant and trustful sources on the internet and make it into slides and report respectively. Meanwhile, as for the students, the may and may not easily understand the topics of the presenters too, sometimes. Apart from that, it was also challenging as there will more or less, certainly, would have some deviation in the information given across the different sets of class. For example, ones in set 1 class present topic 1 might be little different or missing some part as compared to the ones in set 2 or set 3 class. In that crucial time, fortunately, lecturers had explained in detail of those topics, and asked students to engage in the discussion. However, as usual, very few students really participate in the discussion mainly attributed to most of them were either shy, or lazy and even reluctant to answer the questions threw by lectures. Hence, some of the subjects that I had took in semester 6 were rather quite challenging in grasping gist of the knowledge as some of the lecturers merely acted as facilitators in conveying knowledge to the students through positive learning method.

This is an example of how the mid terms and finals done online... Now, most of the university has standardize the way of conducting the online examination amid the pandemic

Lastly, I am glad that I had passed through 75% of my university life, the remaining 25% is all on my 4^th year, where is consists of internship semester and the final semester. I really did hope my batchmates and I can score flying colours in internship semesters as this semester is free from exams and all we need to do are just working while applying practical knowledge from Accounting and Audit. I couldn’t prospect much anything in the future, but just hope everyone can get what they wished for and wanted for. All the best in this semester (Sem 7). Also, wishing everyone to stay safe and take care of health, be sure to got your vaccination as scheduled in MySejahtera app.

This is considered an end of my random sharing of experience. The end.

The end of Sem 5 (3rd Year Sem 1) Slowly and steadily into internship - 4th year Sem 1 (Sem 7) and working life upon finishing degree...

This blog post is basically what I could sum up from this semester (3^rd year semester 1 aka Sem 5) of university life.

Hi everyone, recently, as you may have come across with news related to the trend of Covid-19 in Malaysia, you will be dismayed. It was fluctuated in between 3000 to 57++, as compared to last year’s (2020) early September’s few hundred cases daily record. The highest record, so far and hopefully the last peak, was at 5728 cases on 30^th of January 2021 and since then, the number of cases is declining steadily. This has proven by the statistics given by our Health Ministry Director General - Dr Noor Hisham, that our country’s infection rate has been reduced from above 1.00 to now 0.91*. Since the infection rate has been in downtrend, then I believe some of the university students especially those who are in Science and Engineering field eager to go back to campus in order to conduct their lab experiment. Recently, our Higher Education Ministry had released a notice to all university students regarding to go back to campus or not to. Anyhow, it only let few selected fields students to backto campus, namely whom they are in Science, Engineering field as I mentionedabove and Postgrad students starting by 1st of March 2021. Therefore, my university life for the next semester will remain the same as current situation. Speaking of university life, without further ado, I will talk more about my life in 3^rd year Sem 1 in the next paragraph.

After going through 2 semesters of online classes, I felt like I am getting used to it, gradually… I am not sure that feeling, but it certainly has the feeling literally like working as “freelancer”. Online classes absolutely making us, the students’ life comparatively hectic as to pre-covid-19 usual physical classes. As you can see, we couldn’t meet each other in this pandemic crisis, and instead everything was done online. Even discussion of group assignment with teammates are also online – through social media such as WhatsApp. That is the part many students are afraid to confront. Imagine that you as a team member and the group keep blasting messages of task distribution for group assignments or someone in your team sometimes asks questions to you. That’s the part if you as a team member, what if you are the team leader. You as a team leader sometimes need to plan a feasible tasks distribution and strategies in order to complete the group assignment the lectures had given to groups. The worse part is when a team member hasn’t even replied your message at all or being idle in a group without or barely contributing to the group assignment. Headache, this is just the tip of the iceberg in the online class method. You may think that individual assignment is good due to no more people bothering you or asking you this and that in assignment, but it’s not actually. Sometimes, some lecture may have zero apathy towards students too, sorry to say that, they will likely either give students tons of individual assignment on weekly basis (luckily not mine lecturers for this semester) and some will give reasonable weigh of assignment but giving it out to late in time (one of my subjects in this semester did like this but it was in group assignment). Handling out late, so late till almost final few weeks, tasks to students will only make them to have a great burden in facing upcoming examinations. In short, time management is rather important skill for us, university students in order to survive in universities, regardless in online or physical classes. This is because once we had practiced a good time management, then we will a productive “freelancer” who able to “handle” many jobs given as possible. This may be useful later in society, perhaps.

Random picture of morning walk. Morning walk is the best way, for me, to alleviate stress from the academics.

Apart from that, as far as I concerned, online classes enable us, university students to be more flexible in adapting to the changes. There are many changes in our life that we may not even get to predict and think of. For example, there is a change in online class time from originally shown in the academic schedule to a random different time slot. The changes like the previous example that I had cited will trigger many voices of opinion for a “suitable” (some may suitable and some may not think so) time slot for that subject’s online class. As for this semester, I have one subject that the lecturer whom he is teaching in two universities in a time (my university, UKM and another public institution), usually facing the time dilemma in handling both classes. Therefore, he asked us the best time to conduct classes. Guess what, lastly majority are agreed with Friday evening class even though, for me personally, Friday seems like no “mood” to attend for class. I still accept the majority’s choice since we can gradually adapt to the changes and be flexible with it. Besides, I will cite here as well on the other lecturer who is quite innovative in lecturing. That lecturer did know himself did not have enough time to conduct classes on weekly basis and he had made a series of lecture video on YouTube few months before (to teach the earlier/previous semester students and by recycling it). YouTube is a good platform for some of the students who aren’t into synchronous way of lecturing and those who are lack of internet access. The reason I include those who are lack of internet access is because YouTube offered a way to save a video offline first while we are still have connection to internet. Since YouTube lecture videos is asynchronous to host the lecture, therefore it may make the learning interaction a bit harder. For example, you may find it hard to interact with lecturer and it is limited through email address only. Although the lecturer had made tons of lecturer videos in advanced but still, he had also made it along with a series of learning path for us to carry on self-assessment by ourselves for the respective chapters. Little side note here also, that lecturer (who make YouTube lecture videos) also gave us the 5 continuous assessments (replacement for final exam) with time limit of 24 hours from 0000hrs-2359hrs, in which we entitled to have an absolute freedom of making any changes or time management in doing those assessments. There are still more examples related to be flexible or to suit with abrupt changes in this semester that had just ended but I didn’t mention here because the rest are more or less are similar with generic semesters. In short, we should adapt and be flexible to the new environment or new aspect in life as usually those who successfully adapt to the new situation are the winner.

On top of that, after undergoing two online classes semester, I perceived that open book is the way more challenging method of examination. Albeit of this examination method is so appealing, but it comes with its price too. This is owing to open book method allows students to refer as many resources as they can during the tests, and hence, the difficulty will be elevated too at the same time. You may think that open book exam is a good time to directly copy all the things available in the resource, but in fact it is the opposite. Sometimes, the questions in the exams are so challenging that require more cognitive and analytical skills to answer. So, in order to be well prepared, we as the university students are require doing revision over and over again, so that we could be able to grasp more the gist of the knowledge of the subject and the technical parts of those chapters. Since most of the online exams of this semester were in essay mode, so it can be absolutely hard to copy words from the sources that you had prepared for. Little did we know, there is a wonderful invention online called as plagiarism checker. It can check the similarity of our works with the source we look for, such as through online sources, textbooks and even course mate’s works. Thus, be careful in copying and paraphrasing the works and the better enhancement of our work is through “goreng” method along with some reference to add on, if the exam is essay mode. Meanwhile, for calculations or mathematical questions, you got to stand on your own feet to accomplish it. Henceforth, it can be said that open book examination or other mode of online examination are challenging, but if preparation were done earlier, it maybe will be fine.

Here are few sentences about wrapping up all the point of views I had given on paragraphs above. This is roughly what the online classes look like, except it is fully in online method as compared to previous semester where we had our physical classes for 3-4 weeks before our beloved country – Malaysia landed into Movement Control Order (MCO) in middle of March 2020. MCO may restrict our movement but it will not restrict our academic lessons from going on (P/S: if deferred again from conducting classes, everyone guaranteed to be affected, such as late graduation *touch wood*). I am glad that with these 2 semesters of online classes which I have good teammates in doing group assignments together. Indeed, with the good teammates, your work can be easily done on time as well, along with high quality of written assignments. I used to be so selfish in sharing knowledge or sources related to that specific subjects to others but ever since I am getting more senior in the university life, I had gradually becoming more willing to share my some of my direct seniors notes to others without many hesitations. Well, time flies, two more semester (4^th year Semester 1) I will be going for an internship before resuming studies in 4^th year Semester 2(the last semester of university life). I know I had been typing in so lengthy for this blog post, I got to stop here already, if not it will totally be like as long winded as thesis project.

Good luck to everyone in future studies and undertakings.