Hello! err.. 2016?

     

     

            Wow. It has many moons since I last blogged an entry. I am truly sorry for leaving you in the dark for so long. There are so many emotions, memories, thoughts, rants I want to share. All of them contained inside of me, bursting at the seams. But every time when I get the chance to do so, something comes up.

          I just completed my second semester of my Masters’ Degree and I hope to (no, damn well need to) start my dissertation as soon as possible. It was a packed and trying semester as the learning curve was painfully steep and I literally felt I was struggling to swim in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with only an orange, doughnut float that is keeping me from drowning.

          But I managed to pull through and learnt how to piece the parts of research from scratch and managed to not fail any of my continuous assessments. Now with silent prayers laced with immense fear and hope, I am waiting for my exam results hoping I won’t have to repeat both papers. 

          As the wise Maya Angelou once said, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better” - After discovering this quote, I felt some sense of relief and calmness. It hit a cord within me and its unlike any those quotes that says, “YOU CAN DO IT” or “AIM FOR THE STARS” etc. Her advice is a logical and achievable target, doing the best that you can until you know how to do it better. Something all struggling postgraduate students need to acknowledge and understand.

          Well, I shall put my personal entry on hold for now and share with you on what happened last Thursday in my next post. See ya! :D  

Random Ramblings : First Semester of MESL

Where have I been?

I was blessed with the opportunity to continue my studies in Masters of English as a Second Language in February. It's not teaching English as a Second Language but learning in depth about English as a Second Language. It's a total different ball game altogether. There are quite a handful of people gets teaching English and learning English mixed up.

There's a vast difference between Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) and Masters of English as a Second Language (MESL). TESL mainly focuses on methodology on teaching English and mind you, you don't study or learn English but you learn how to TEACH English to second-language learners. Whereas for MESL, it focuses mainly on language acquisition and here the targeted language is English. Hence, focusing on HOW second-language learners LEARN or ACQUIRE the targeted language, English. Hope this clears the confusion.

Anyhow, I have finally completed my first semester of my Masters program and it was an... interesting ride. Interesting because it felt like travelling a known terrain which becomes the unknown. Familiar parts of the terrain that gave me this false sense of control, but the truth is, I have little or no control at all. It felt as if my four years as an undergraduate student seems nonexistent. I had unlearned and relearned so much that my brains (or whatever is left) felt like exploding out of this thick skull of mine.

Trying to grasp totally new concepts of language acquisitions, exploring works of renowned researchers, and reading papers after papers  has sent me questioning myself why I am here in the first place. According to my course mate who was is linguistic graduate, I quote her, "It is as if the 3 1/2 years of what I have learned as an undergraduate has been compacted into the three weeks of the semester". Imagine that, I am a TESL graduate and linguistics is fairly new to me. I truly felt like I was drowning.  

I thought I knew what I was doing and I thought everything would turn out just fine. But halfway and at the end of the semester, I questioned myself countless of times. Why am I doing this? Is it for the money? Is it for the passion? Is it for the greater good? What's the greater good? How am I going to apply all of these knowledge in my future job? Tons of unanswered questions on replay in my head and as expected, self-doubt comes creeping in to every corner of both my conscious and subconscious mind. Cloaking every light, dampening every spark. It was and still is a struggle. Being depressed was nothing new and every now and then, anxiety attacks kicks in.

Well, that's all for now. Stay tuned for more nonsense from me!