Study break

I'm checking my email and taking a study break - the first Immunology midterm is today. Since I went to a small college, I don't think I've EVER had an evening exam.

General Virology last Friday went very well - only one person scored higher than me, one scored the same, and they were both fellow grad students. I don't like exam-based courses though, because they do nothing whatsoever to improve my appalling lack of academic discipline. I'd rather have a course with assignments that force me to do work.

FlowerMoonFish, who's a much better Christian than me, says she would purposely study MORE than she had to in junior college so that the less smart girls in her dorm wouldn't feel bad if they saw her relaxing before exams. I think if I'd done JC in Singapore, I'd just have used the extra time to go kai-kai to get away from the insanely competitive atmosphere.

The Ebling Library near the university hospital is a great place to study. Rows of desks with outside views, a sort of study "bar" facing the internal gallery of the Health Sciences Learning Center building, and MASSIVE glass windows for sunlight. Since it's further from campus, there are fewer annoying undergrads around =)

Biasiswa Agong follow-up

For whatever peculiar reason, my post last year on interviewing for the Biasiswa Agong (King's Scholarship) is the first English language Google hit for "biasiswa agong", even above the JPA's page. This is sort of weird because I didn't get it (only 10 scholarships for MS and 5 for PhD are offered per year).

Anyway, a couple of people subesquently posted comments asking for advice (sorry for the delays in replying). Here's a short list of what I think I did right and wrong, hope it helps.

• In the letter notifying interviewees, they say to bring a hard copy of your proposal. Bring FOUR copies - 1 for each interviewer and 1 for yourself so you don't get confused.
• Also bring a copy of your CV just in case - if I remember correctly, the original application that we mailed in required one, but won't hurt right?
• Also bring a short outline of a verbal presentation of your proposal so you can rehearse silently while you're waiting. It's an interview not a presentation though, so don't make yourself a long speech.
• If you've been studying abroad for a while, PRACTICE YOUR BM!!! The interview was in English, but they asked a few sentences in Malay to check if I was still reasonably fluent. Pull out your long-forgotten SPM buku rujukan or whatever.
• Even if 1 interviewer does most of the talking, try to look at/address all of them while you're speaking. My interviewers were 1 Malay lady and 2 men; the lady seemed to talk most and to know the most about the subject I was discussing.
• Make sure you can explain how your studies/research will be useful to the rakyat eventually.
• If you're applying for a program abroad, be prepared with a convincing reason you won't just take the money and run (I think the govt is becoming a bit more aware of the brain drain problem even if they still suck at corralling the undergrad JPA scholars). And no, "my parents are getting old" is not convincing.
• Try to make yourself sound original and independent. This is where I think I screwed up - my current advisor/boss had just emailed me a big PDF of his grant proposal so I was sort of like "Er, yah, I'm just going to be the research assistant on this cool project..." *slaps forehead*

Good luck to you people who contacted me or who are reading this...let me know how it goes!

By the way, they suck at notifying unsuccessful candidates. I only found out when there was a newspaper article about the YDP Agong having lunch or something with the scholars. I can understand not notifying every Ali, Muthu, and Ah Beng who applied, but there weren't that many people who made it to the interview stage so at least could have sent out "We regret to inform..." letters right?

As for me...I came to the US anyway. I'm 8 months into a 2-year MS program. My salary and tuition are being covered partly by a scholarship from the institution I'm at (you know, "institution" sounds a bit like a mental hospital...) and partly by my PI's grant funding, since I'm working for him as a research assistant. This is generally what happens in the US for students in the natural sciences - funded either as RAs or TAs (teaching assistants, who teach undergrad classes).

However, if you're in bio like me and thinking of taking the same path to "the States", be warned that the NIH (National Institutes of Health), which is one of the biggest resources for life sciences research here, has been funding a smaller and smaller fraction of grant applications over the past few years, so your boss may run out of money for graduate student salaries. One of my lab-mates just lost her job due our boss pokai. So keep looking for other scholarships, and also for TA-ships and the like.

By the way - if you have any adik-beradik who want to study in the US for undergrad, tell them to apply to Williams College. Williams gives all international students a roundtrip ticket home annually. I almost fainted when my sis FlowerMoonFish told me. Bloody kid!

Final

Today I waltzed out of my molecular biology final after barely half an hour - the first to leave.

This is notable because (aside from it being my first final exam in more than two years) I'm rarely the first person to hand in an exam. It's partly because my father's drilled into my head since primary school that one should always check one's answers, but also because...if you're the first person to walk out and you know others are struggling with it...you feel bad.

It's a form of survivor's guilt, a feeling that one's ability is undeserved and is morally culpable. My sis FlowerMoonFish, being both smarter and nicer than me, feels it more strongly. (Last year when she was taking A-Levels she said she studied extra so that the girls who actually needed to study wouldn't feel bad when they saw that she was mugging too.) It's an emotion that the jerky kids who like to suck up to the prof and wear their brains on their sleeves don't have to deal with.

But in the final analysis [hur hur hur], someone has to walk out of that room first. It's a nice day outside, might as well be me.

---

Last night I was explaining to Steve about in situ synthesis of oligos for DNA microarrays (see here, it's really cool):

"And who came up with that? A biologist or an engineer?"
"An engineer, but it was a biologist who came up with the application. I'm sure an engineer didn't wake up one morning and say 'I'm going to invent a way to synthesize oligos on a slide for fun.'"
"I don't think you can be a pure biologist or a pure engineer any more. You have to merge."
"Oh yeah? Let's merge."

^_^

EDIT: good GRIEF I'm degenerating into one of those girls who talk about their boyfriends all the time. The other night on the phone my dad asked me why I "have to be in a relationship all the time". Emotionally needy I guess =D

SPM anxiety

Soo...It's exam results season again. I'm sure all of us who went to school in former British colonies remember that.

SPM results are coming out/have come out today. I'm hoping the kids I was teaching bio to last year did okay. It was at a little kampung school where I was volunteering out of sheer boredom during the months I was at home unemployed.

It was my first teaching experience, and my Malay was pretty rotten after five years of disuse, and I'd forgotten all the methods of "spotting" (prognosticating) SPM questions that my classmates had come up with, and I'd forgotten what kind of answers examiners wanted. Malaysian public education is a damned bloody stupid mind game, really.

I had my father's dictum in mind, though (he taught Form Six chemistry for several years): "If a few students fail, it's the students' fault. If the whole class fails, it's the teacher's fault."

One of the more depressing things about the school was that they'd hung bunting saying things like "5P and 3P [the top classes in Form 5 and Form 3], You Are Our Hope". This is what I really don't like about streaming: kids in the lower classes are automatically assumed to be not worth the bother.

Fussy parents can always make the argument that their precious babies will be bored if they're in a class with dumbos, but that's the case anyway. If your kid is that freaking smart they should be smart enough to ignore the bad teachers and teach/entertain themselves. Like me =D Also on a more serious note, I think learning humility and appreciating other people for non-quantifiable talents is part of an education in being a decent human being.

I'd like to apply to be a TA next semester...I want to learn to teach. Tutoring one or a few is something I enjoy, but talking in front of a whole class is a different story, as I learned. Lesson planning, encouraging participation, holding people's attention...

My little Mousie did very well in her A-levels. The family's proud of her.

Biasiswa Agong interview

EDIT: I wrote a follow-up to this post a year later because for some weird reason it keeps showing up #1 on Google searches for "biasiswa agong" *scratches head*. No, I didn't get the scholarship, but I'm doing my MS studies anyway. Please see here for the follow-up, and if you're applying this year or applied last year, let me know how it went! I'm always interested in connecting with other M'sians in academia.

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I just got a call from someone called Ismail at the JPA to tell me to check the JPA site this afternoon for my interview date for the King's Scholarship (Biasiswa Yang di-Pertuan Agong, .doc file explaining what the scholarship is).

*does happy kitty dance* I've been worrying that my application was incomplete, or didn't reach (even though I sent it by PosLaju), or got thrown in the trash, since I never heard anything back from the other JPA scholarship I applied to earlier this year.

Biasiswa Yang Di-Pertuan Agong ini adalah bagi mengiktiraf kebolehan luar biasa seseorang pelajar, di samping memberi peluang kepada pelajar untuk melanjutkan pengajian di peringkat pasca ijazah dalam bidang Sains dan Teknologi.
[The King's Scholarship aims to acknowledge a student's extraordinary abilities, in addition to giving students opportunities to further their studies at the graduate degree level in Science and Technology fields.]

Penerima Biasiswa Yang Di-Pertuan Agong yang telah menamatkan pengajian diwajibkan pulang ke negara ini tetapi tidak terikat untuk berkhidmat dengan Kerajaan.
[Recipients of the King's scholarship who have completed their studies are obliged to return to this country but are not bonded to Government service.]

That's exactly what I want - to return to Malaysia, but have the freedom to do what I want to do with it.

OK, now I have an immediate reason to whip out that material on dengue from my boss and reread all of it like I've been planning to.

And I really hope I'll have a chance to explain myself in English. Last time I had an interview in Malay was for my SPM Lisan (oral) exam 6 years ago. One of the selection criteria is "Prestasi semasa temuduga" (prestige in the interview), so I'd better stay cool and do as best as I can in BM though.