OCTOBER 12, 2014
Dajia
hao! This is week 10 of classes and I must say, they are going well. I just
had an exam today and I am sure I did pretty well on it. I found it very
interesting that your grades are dependent on how well you work in comparison
to your classmates using the bell curve. The culture in Singapore is much more
competitive than in the United States, which is more collaborative. I found
that many local students preferred to study during the recess week as opposed
to the exchange students who decided to travel.
The difference is that many exchange students are taking their courses
with the pass/fail option so grades are less competitive.
There were
quite a few other academic cultural differences that I found between attending
Nanyang Technological University and Central Michigan University. First, many of the lectures are recorded by
the university and posted online. I thought of this as very interesting because
some people would just not come to classes that have recorded lectures. I would
feel guilty if I did not attend class so I have been to every lecture but I
noticed that some students take advantage of this fact. I did, however, find
the recorded lectures especially beneficial when the time came to study for
midterms. The second thing I noticed is that for each class, a copy of the
previous year’s final exam is posted online. My initial reaction was “where is
the academic integrity in that?” I then realized that this allowed students to
prepare better for exams and have a better idea of what to study as opposed to
going into the exam hoping you have studied the correct material. And finally I
noticed that all of my textbooks (except Chinese language) are written by
American authors. I did not know that the rest of the world used American
textbooks and research findings so heavily. As a result of using these
textbooks, I sometimes feel uncomfortable in classes like Health Psychology,
which often draws on statistics or facts of American health and everyone looks
at me as if to see my response. I’ve heard most of these statistics on health
already and it is one of the many reasons I am going into the health field. The
same thing happens in Cultural Psychology: many statistics are about America
and people look to me to comment or to see if I fit the statistic. I also would like to hear more statistics on
Asian countries because I know a lot about America already and would like to
focus my attention on a broader perspective.
Since the
semester is only 13 weeks long with a three week exam period, the semester is
coming to an end. I will have four finals in total, three in one week and one
in the following one. I plan to start studying next week (week 11) and I have
already drawn up a daily plan. I have to remind myself of the quote “ If you
fail to plan, you plan to fail” and keep that in mind as I prepare and motivate
myself for these rigorous exams. Until next time… Zai jian!
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| The Last Day of My Chinese Class |
