Little Taipei 27 September 2007
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This is the place where I used to have lunches and dinners in Ames, Iowa. Their angry fish is amazingly good! I love chatting with my friends while having their delicious noodles.
The funny thing is, although it is owned and sells Chinese food, all of its cooks are Latinos! Now, you tell me about ethnic diversity!
False Hope… 29 July 2007
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In relation to what I posted previously about the election, hereby I updated that posting to be NOT TRUE.
Am I lying?
No. I did get elected by at least 10 people out of 19 people.
So, why was it not true?
Because the bosses canceled it.
It has nothing to do with my qualifications and skills. I believe, as people who voted me also believe, I am very much capable of handling this position. My track records and my resume are tangible proofs that I am the right person.
But, there is a teeny weeny little detail called ‘religious background’. As much as it is not relevant to my position in terms of being able to do the job well, that is exactly the reason why they put me off: because I’m different.
Well, I guess I will just ignore my previous post. Obviously it’s just a false hope. Once I thought that this place will be better in seeing what’s worth seeing in a person, and not judging someone’s based on ‘colors’. It turned out that they are visually very demanding.
Well, I am who I am. I don’t need a position to prove it.
It’s time to move…
So, it’s official now… 20 July 2007
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Yup, I’m elected.
Exciting? Yes.
Terrifying? Yes.
The thing that I hate about it is that I will be awfully busy and have less time to do things that I enjoy, less time for my significant others, less time to travel. Oh, and I have to maintain ‘my image’ all the times and can’t be myself, even when I really, really, really want to.
Yet, it’s exciting, because I believe I have the opportunity (and power) make good things happen, rather than complaining about things. The question is, can I really do it? As much as I’m positive and optimistic about it, the results of the votes show me that I really need to be vigilant and get my weapons ready. Constant Vigilant! (says Mad-eye Moody in Harry Potter).
Oh well, lets see how it goes.
Help me.
Pray for me.
Glocall 2007 1 July 2007
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I’ve submitted my abstracts to Glocall 2007 last night. This is a joined conference between two CALL organizations in Asia Pacific: APACALL and PacCALL. This year’s conference will be held in Hanoi and Ho Chin Minh City (formerly called Saigon), Vietnam in November 2007.
I’m crossing my fingers to get at least one of my three abstracts accepted, but I have to wait until August 15 to find out. Plus, I skipped two conferences of PacCALL already, in 2005 and in 2006. I got my abstract accepted, with Anne O’Bryan, but we couldn’t start the research because we couldn’t collect the data. So, we passed that. In 2006, I got no ideas, and I skipped it. It turned that there is a doctorate student from Hong Kong who was looking for me (because his research happened to be concerning ESP courses for Indonesian migrant workers in Hong Kong). This year, I decide that it’s time for me to go and get CALL network in Asia Pacific. I even skipped RELC and CELC conferences in Singapore this year, although I got my abstracts accepted for those conferences, because I want to make sure that I get funding from my department to go (every lecturer in my department is entitled to one presentation abroad annually).
I really want to go and I even did a bit of research already regarding my transportation and my lodging in Vietnam. The price of the flights is definitely not cheap! It seems that I may have to go to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia first, then to Hanoi, because Air Asia offers a cheaper price than other direct flights. And the crazy thing is that it’s more expensive to fly from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh than to fly from Indonesia to Vietnam! As for accommodation, I am lucky I think because Hanoi university offers a room at the university guest house for $1/night, but in Ho Chi Minh I have to pay $32/night because the location of the conference right downtown.
My only concerns are about the funding. It’s going to be pricey just to pay for the flights and accommodation (about $700). Plus I need to pay the conference fee ($250) and my meal there, and fiscal (damn Indonesian government which requires its citizen to pay $100 just to go abroad!), city transportation, and other stuffs. I’ve thought of some ways to cut my expenses, like using cheaper flights, taking instant noodles with me (sucks!), and maybe going only to one city instead of two. Or get more funding from RELO or Dikti. I’m not even sure if the department is going to help me with funding. Oh, well..
For now, I just need to worry about getting in…
Sending the manuscript: time to pray! 14 May 2007
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I’ve been terribly busy for the last three days to edit my Master thesis to be submitted as a chapter for the forthcoming “Handbook of Research on E-Learning Methodologies for Language Acquisition“, edited by Rita de Cassia Veiga Marriott of University of Birmingham/UK and Patricia Lupion Torres of Universidade Catolica do Parana/Brazil, published by Idea Group, Inc.
It was crazy! It was definitely not easy to cut down more than 50,000 words into mere 7,500 words in three days. Not to mention my reluctance in deleting information that I felt somewhat necessary to include, but it had to go! Still, I ended up having 7,632 words. Finally, at 3: 30 AM, I was just too tired of cutting words and omitting tiny but relevant details, and I decided to send it to the editors.
I barely met the deadline of submission when I submitted it this morning. According to my time (which is GMT +7), I submitted it right on May 15, instead of BEFORE May 15. But the editors live in UK and Brazil, which are behind Indonesia time (ha!), so I cheated the devil 
I’m not sure if they even will accept my submission, because it was a late submission and I didn’t comply with the guideline on the number of words for the manuscript. Wishing that it will be selected for the book chapter is even too ambitious, especially when I have to compete with this person, and being reviewed by this person.
It’s time to hope and pray!
(update at 12:45 PM) Got an email from the editors. They received the submission (phew!) and forwarded it to reviewers for blind review and evaluation. Maybe it will turn out that they love every single punctuation in it (yeah right!) or maybe they will delete the file immediately after reading it, followed by a series of vomiting (of course, drama, drama, drama). By all means, I’m hoping for publication due to my narcissistic tendency (reading my name on the list of contributors is awesome), but more importantly I want my academic work to contribute on the whatever-you-name-it advancement of knowledge in my field.
Making decisions 10 April 2007
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I remember putting that quote on the first page of my undergraduate thesis as my personal belief in 1997. How true. How difficult to do. |
As a Libran (not that I believe in astrology. If it’s good, I take the advice If not, well, throw it to the trash bin and move on…), making decisions on actions has been my greatest challenge. Should I do this or that? If I do this, what will happen? So and so. I have this habit of seeking advices from people around me and at the end of the day, after asking advices from over 10 people or more, I still come up with no decision. I also have the tendency to follow my heart, do things recklessly and regret it later. Complicated, huh?
Particularly now, when I have to make a great decision of my career, I am still not sure whether I have taken the right decision. After all I know that my dearests are not thrilled with my decision and it will put a delay on my other plan for my academic career. I admire my dearests’ wisdom to let me make the choice and face the consequences and still love me anyway at the end of the journey. But then, when you’re making a decision and it’s not satisfying your loved ones, it’s heart-breaking.
Of course, when I decide this advancement to my career, I can see that it will be glorious and challenging for me. Why, everybody likes to be in a position that enables one to make a difference and to get things done. I’ve been frustrated for a long time for not making good things happen in my office, partly because I had no power to ensure that my proposal was applied. And now the opportunity has come and of course I embrace it dearly, thinking that maybe this time I can make good things happen.
But still, the glory and the challenges will be for me. What’s left for my dearests is less time and less attention. See how selfish I am? They may be proud of my achievements, but I guess all these times, it’s always me, me, and me.
After all, I think I’m quite fixed with my decision, and all the consequences that follow it. I realize that it may be rocky, full of frustration, lots of hard work, and all those negative situations. Yet, I intend to come out of it triumphantly.
So help me God.
Course Evaluation? I’m terrified… 31 March 2007
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I planned to have a course evaluation for courses that I am teaching this trimester. I did. I swear. I even put it in the syllabus.
Did I do it?
Nope. I have no time.
First of all, I have to finish all materials and give my students time to finish the assignments (which, by the way, quite a lot, as I don’t give tests). Giving a course evaluation, where they will be left by themselves for an hour to fill in the form, will reduce the number of class meetings.
Secondly, I don’t have time to retype and copy the evaluation form, which I planned to adapt from Iowa State’s (thanks to Dan Douglas, my former professor in Iowa State, for sending me a copy of it) and I don’t have time to ask one of my senior colleagues to observe me teaching.
Thirdly, I am terrified of the prospects of having low scores and nasty comments from my students about my methodology, materials and assignments. And having a colleague criticizing my way of teaching gives me the creep. I know, I know, I should be open-minded and be objective about course evaluating my classes. The results of the course evaluation, no matter how painful it is, will be beneficial for improving me as a teacher and for improving my courses. And I know that I should ‘walk the talk’, meaning that I should do what I’ve been telling my students in my English for Specific Purposes (ESP) class that a course evaluation is vital to the design of the course.
Yet, I just don’t have the guts to do it and it led me to my other excuses of not having time to produce the course evaluation time, to distribute the forms and to invite an observer to my classes. I guess, I’m still not ready to face the possibilities of having myself being criticized about my teaching performance. Nobody likes being criticized, ain’t it right? It’s painful for my pride and it will ruin my self-confidence about the popularity of my courses.
Honestly, I’ve been thinking about the low intake of my courses. At every beginning of the trimester, when students are dropping and adding classes, I will anxiously check the registration website from time to time, literally every 10 minutes, to check how many students register to my courses. And guess what, my classes are definitely not the most popular one. I rarely have a full class, with the exception of my Business English class.
In retrospect, I guess the reason of that situation is because my courses usually use assignments as a means of assessing students’ performance. And my assignments are usually time-consuming. I heard from a student of mine, who is pretty close to me and feels comfortable of being honest to me, that assignments are not popular among students because they are time consuming and usually require more efforts to complete than attending tests. Tests usually take about 100 minutes to finish and students only need to study the night before to prepare themselves for the tests. Once it’s done, it’s done. It is unlike doing assignments in which students are required to understand the instructions, read the theories underlying the answers of the assignments, collect materials for the assignments, write the answers or reports and presentation, and present the reports. For instance, for my ESP final project, a month and a week was not enough because they needed to find a learner, conducted an interview with the learner, did a need analysis (in which they had to read the book first to be able to do it), created a syllabus for 8 class meetings, designed a material for one meeting, wrote a report, prepared a presentation, and presented the report. Although my assignments are usually done in groups, I still hear students groaned and complained about it. I can of course blame my students for not being able to manage their time well to finish my assignments. After all, I usually give the instructions for the final project on the first day of class, along with the syllabus. However, I really want to know if that is the case and not because of my mistake.
But, giving assignments is one of my teaching philosophies. First, it is unfair to assess the ability and knowledge of a person just in a two hours test. It will not give a complete picture of someone’s ability. Plus, not every person can memorize all information in a textbook. Secondly, I believe that it is the duty of a teacher to prepare his/her students for his/her future job. I don’t think my students will be required to do a multiple choice question or write an essay answer when a problem arises in his/her workplace. It is most likely that they will be required to work with their colleagues in groups, do a complete analysis using data and resources, produce a report, and present their solution to the problem. Those elements can only be practiced through doing a final project. Tests are good; they just can’t truly assess overall student ability. I think, for the time being, I should be contented with a reflective note part in the assignments, where my students can reflect about their experiences in doing the project, what they have learned from doing the project, what they like or dislike about doing the project, and any comments/criticism/suggestions for the betterment of the project. At least, this is some kind of an evaluation, although not of all aspects of the course. These reflective notes have helped me shaping and perfecting the assignments, and sometimes my students will also voice their concerns, criticism, and comments on the course.
How do you evaluate your course? I really want to hear other teachers’ experiences in this matter, so drop me a comment!
