Another university talk that will probably turn into another complaint... we shall see.

As you know, diploma was done and dusted and not long after, I pursued with bachelor's degree. Because everything happened without a break, it's actually really hard for me to capture what's going on. It also doesn't help that my studying environment is the same - doing both diploma and degree in UTeM.

Back to my main concern, what year am I exactly? The topic I bet my friends are mostly confused about.

So I completed diploma unofficially (haven't graduate) in Jan 2019. I started my degree in Feb 2019. Yes, we barely had a month break between the 2 education levels. 

First week into degree, I am a 1st year degree student. The week after, I officially became a 2nd year student after waiving 36 credits in total. So in layman's terms, I skipped a year. That means I am a 2nd year and 1st semester student as soon as I got into degree.

Now, let me talk about my 1st-but-on-paper-it's-2nd-year experience. Definitely nothing to brag about. Don't get me wrong, I was ahead the rest of my peers who didn't continue with direct entry (DE). But because of it, what was supposed to end had no closure and what was supposed to start had no clear starting point.

You know starting a new level of education supposingly felt exciting and fresh - like you can't wait to kick ass! Unfortunately, that wasn't the case for me and also the rest of my DE friends. Our lives became so hectic out of the blue. 

Getting into September of 2019, I am a 2nd year and 2nd semester student. As soon as semester starts, everything felt heavy on my shoulders. I've been carrying year 1, year 2 and year 3 subjects throughout the first and second semester. That indirectly means I have no set classes unlike the normal intake students. Not able to fit in anywhere is the one thing I find annoying as a DE student. It's like you know you're at a familiar place yet everything felt so foreign.

So in the upcoming semester, I will now be a 3rd year and 1st semester student. Meaning I am left with one more year to graduate degree. I just graduated diploma last year wth. Aaand my results are just in. Last semester was indeed one hell of a ride. Because I never really had an in-depth update on what happened, I feel like last semester's "drama" was worth noting in this blog post.

So I took 5 exam-based subjects, 1 co-curricular subject and 1 project-based subject. Those summed up to 17 credits in total. The max that we can take per semester is 20 credits. Initially, I did take 20 like the rest of my coursemates but...*drumrolls* first drama of the semester happened!

As you know I went to Korea last year on October 2019 - literally in the middle of classes. I left on Week 4 for 2 weeks. Oh God, I felt like I was being chased during the first 2 weeks once semester began. I had to arrange my own timetable and get consent from all the lecturers for the classes I'm taking. Just to let them know that there are DE students joining the class as our names are sometimes not registered under the lecturers.

So what happened was, one of the classes I wanted to take had an extremely strict lecturer. Let's call her Dr. I. During her class, she was making it clear that she won't accept any "excuses" for playing truant because she conducts frequent quizzes and assignments. Meaning me missing 2 weeks worth of classes, are in no way acceptable and tolerable to her. I had only a week to settle this one form saying I won't attend classes due to a certain event. I needed it signed so that I'm not penalized for skipping classes. Most of my lecturers were told that I'm going with my family (when in fact, I planned it all with Ka Mun lol) but I did lie to some saying I'm going to my brother's graduation instead...... yes, yo girl needed to survive.

However, Dr. I die-die also don't wanna accept my explanation (read: white lies). I contacted her to meet up but she said there was no need and insisted to tell my academic advisor (I call it PA) directly that she can't accept my request and therefore, unable to sign that form. My PA knows everything - the fact that I'm going to Korea with a friend, I've been lying to some lecturers, I've no brother graduating and everything in between. In the end, I had to drop her class and that was literally my final resort.

After I got the form signed by every other lecturer, I needed to get approval from my faculty's dean. My PA was so kind to help me throughout this whole thing. She ended up fixing all the lies I wrote in my letter to the dean and even helped to contact the dean so that I could meet with him directly without asking the office. I felt like I kept owing her things.

Then my trip to Korea went by and I was back in class. I thought everything was gonna flow well after that but who am I kidding. First of all, my project-based subject which is called Workshop 2 is a group project with 4 people. Each group is assigned to one supervisor (SV) and my SV was actually my PA - the same person I talked about just now.

Basically, I had a terrible group leader. It was hard to expect because he's a dean's list student and from the get-go you would assume that he's someone reliable but that wasn't the case. Just imagine, a leader who is the only one in an official group chat created by the coordinator meant for this subject, did not update the rest of us regarding anything. This subject has no class. Our SV is the one giving us marks but she did not hear from us for like 10 weeks. I was partly guilty of not saying anything too but I wasn't doing anything that is worth an update. Also, I had no clue that the group chat was always getting updates up until the last minute and none of my members said anything to me. I found out later that one of them secretly joined the group chat because our leader wasn't telling us shit.

I really have no luck with project-based subjects. I just hope my SV/PA do not hate me for this. I complaint about my groupmates a lot and literally to all my DE friends too. And funny thing was I had a bad group experience with 4 of my other subjects as well.

For my Human-Computer Interaction class, I ended up having to give ideas and literally giving my all into thinking but nobody was executing. Basically everyone was just hoping someone else to do it. Nobody was prepared for the presentation and it was so frustrating. I implemented over 10 things on the project and they barely explained half of it. Penat-penat orang fikir idea gempak, time present dia tak reti nak explain gempak baik takyah.

For my Hubungan Etnik class (retook it again after diploma), because I was away for 2 weeks I was given the penutup for our final report and I was also the 'editor'. Problem was my groupmates never proofread things themselves and it wasn't one or two souls, it was all 6 members. I struggled so hard with the report... dah la they plagiarised things word for word. A lot of things didn't make sense because they don't freaking read back what they copied. Sumpah stress. Pastu at last, you know what my lecturer said? She said "Amelynn, saya tengok report awak, part awak buat apa je?" in front of the ENTIRE CLASS AND I WAS READY TO GIVE UP ON THAT A.

For Senamrobik which was our koku, we had to do a group performance of our senamrobik. My friends - Aina and Mala, were in the same group as me and the other 7 members are friends from different faculty. Because they are a gang of friends who are bigger than us, we let them decide what majority wants so Mala and I was willing to choreograph the moves accordingly. Paling sakit hati is when they showed us a video they think is ok and after showing them how it would go with our chosen song they were like, "Eee ni susahnya, laju sangat lah"... padahal kau yang tunjuk nak ni tadi. Then proceed to give suggestions that budak tadika pon tak buat sebab senang sangat. I mean if you can think of better solutions I wouldn't mind but these people dah la pikir tak nak, buat pon tak nak adumak. Orang kalau tak pandai, slow slow ah belajar. Ni tak, tak pandai asyik nak tukar bila nak hafalnya?! And the discussion went on for a few meetings.

For Technical English, it wasn't really a big deal but I guess I was too invested in the research and when I was the only one doing a lot and lead my group, it just felt unfair. Also when the presentation I had great expectation on got rejected because of our literature review, I just felt like blaming someone. People say that the topic we chose was too hard. I was the one who suggested it. I was confident about everything that I even volunteered to present first day of presentation as the first group. Thought it would be good to end fast but instead, we had to present again. As soon as we got out of the presentation room on the first presentation, I was honestly hoping that my groupmates would come forward and give ideas on how to fix this but nobody says anything unless I start. Like people are just waiting for my ideas. Literally if you've been reading this far, that was mostly the case for every of my classes. I wish people would stop depending so much on me.

So I walked through you guys with a semester worth of drama. From thinking I could easily score, to having terrible group members for all of my classes, to being told that I messed up my final presentations and reports, but in the end, to able to maintain my CGPA... I sense that my life span had just been snatched away. And in case you were wondering, I got an A for Hubungan Etnik and Technical English despite all the stress and an A- for Human-Computer Interaction. The other subjects, let's just keep it a secret. Glad is an understatement. I don't know what went wrong and I don't know what went right anymore. I'm just glad everything's behind me.

Not quiet looking forward for the next semester because of the weight of the subjects BUT yo gurl gotta do dis! So lesgedittt fam! The 2020 spirit.