a short evaluation of one of my childhood ambitions

Did you know that as a child, one of my dream job was to be a researcher, work in a laboratory or even work my way up to a lecturer?

I think it was my interest in Science as a child, together with my introverted nature that made me prone towards such an area. I had wanted a job with minimal human contact. I also had interest to educate. I often imagine myself teaching and sharing what knowledge I had with others. To me, a laboratory job would be good because it meant staring at non-living objects. A lecturer job better than a lower level teacher job (SS, JC), as it also meant, I had less need to control a class, which I knew I wouldn't be good at (I have had a problem disciplining people all these while).

I was aware that I wasn't a very bright or talented student all along. I was very aware that while some could score and write fluently without much hard work, for me to do something impressive required me to squeeze every ounce of blood out of me. And to me those people were naturally smart, while I'm a fake smart, meaning I can produce results with a lot of hard work, while they without much hard work can produce results. And no matter how hard I work, I will never reach their standard when they do not work much at all.

My sister was one such example of a naturally smart person. I looked up to her a lot as a very intelligent being. One who produces results while not putting in a lot of work. I attribute that to intelligence, she picks things up easily. Or perhaps she can understand with minimal effort, or catch concepts with just a glance, or capture the knowledge while the teacher teaches and have no need for revision after class.

It was a similar case for my "running ability". A lot of people often boast of my running ability. I have been in school team, I have even completed a marathon. But I am very very aware and clear about my "talent". I do not have talent. If I have talent, it is in training and perseverance. It is definitely not physiological or morphological, but intellectual and emotional advantage.

I am good at reading up running magazines, treating my injuries, taking care of my diet and workouts and running even when it hurts. But I am not one who can run fast without training or with minimal training. And even if I train to my maximum, I am never as good as the naturally talented who train minimally.

What do you call this? Something like the middle class grouping? I am never good enough nor bad enough to be noticed or for someone to place their attention on. I think it is this group of people that could possibly be neglected in the society/education system. We are good, but never good enough. Bad, but never bad enough. We are average, just okay.

As I became a Christian, a whole new whole opened to me. I realized that when I love people, I become less anti-social and more outward-looking. I started to realize I actually enjoy company and interaction with people. So my view towards laboratory work started to change. I started to consider careers such as counselor, tour guide, civil servant etc.

As I entered into University and got the biomedical/cell and molecular/genetics/biochemistry-treatment and experienced "boring" education which is education that does not engaged one's heart or mind, but simply attempted to drill knowledge into the brain, I was no longer able to churn out top quality grades. I no longer desired to memorize as I did in high school and junior college and work so hard pointlessly for grades... It was here, that I stopped dreaming to be a lecturer, nearly crossing it out of my list of possible careers for good.

It was the pains of university life together with greater self-awareness of who I am that caused me to stop dreaming to be a lecturer.

However, recently, I experienced a revival of sorts. As I began to attend Biology classes in which I was interested in, I started to dream a little more. I realized I really do have interest in growing intellectually. I desire not just to make my heart a garden, but also my mind one. I enjoyed learning and sharing the joy of what I learn.

I am still aware of who I am. But I do not wish to short-change myself by limiting myself to my expectations and beliefs of my capability. Neither do I want to slough my way through land which God has no intention for me to pass through.

So my decision is to be humble and to learn. To desire humility and wisdom. To be aware of my capability and aware of who I am. Yet, never discounting what hard work and a touch of luck can do in my life. It is important to be discerning to God's leading and not be so caught up in a I-me-mine attitude where the world revolves around me. I need to be aware of God's work in my life and follow His leading. This is my conclusion. I shall do my best, whether in deciding my career or attaining my career, and let Him do the rest.

Thanks to Angelina for inspiring this entry. While talking to her on the bus today about University education, I thought of this.

Year 3 Sem 2 modules... Going deeper

Why do I prefer the modules Behavioural Biology and Evolution and Comparative Genomics over Ecology and Environmental Systems and Natural Heritage of Singapore?

I shall do a short analysis and evaluation to investigate in this post.

One possibility is the lack of proper lecture notes for the former two modules. I came with an open mind, heart, a pen and some paper and was open to exploring and retrieving new knowledge. It gave me the feel that the discipline was dynamic and not fixed. I can go back home after class to search up journal papers to read up more etc., the lecture was not exhaustive. This subjects were open. I saw how I could apply things I learn in class to life. Furthermore, those two modules were related, and I often cross what I learn between them.

This meaning, the latter two modules were highly structured with proper lecture notes and clear guidelines as to what I need to study to do well, which limited my mind and heart. I felt closed in. That all I had to know for this module (module objectives) were on my lecture notes and recommended textbooks. I had less incentive and interest to explore. Straightaway, I was robbed of the joy of learning. I felt what there was to learn was confined to the two hours a week I spent in class.

Could the trick to spurring my interest be the removal of the lecture notes? I can recall another module without lecture notes which I loved. And the modules which I enjoy normally have lecture notes that have minimal words! But only those I voluntarily chose!

Hmmm...

Another thing that assisted my learning and made it fun was the ability to see the module in the light of the other modules. The interdisciplinary part of it. When I was studying for Behavioural Biology, I used knowledge I attained from modules such as Life Form and Function, Ecology and Environmental Systems and Natural Heritage of Singapore. Actually, that was the most fun module I've studied for so far! :)

So...

Maybe next Semester, I will need to curb my perfectionistic tendencies and my inertia for change and forgo the lecture notes, come to class with a blank piece of paper, my pen, an open mind and an open heart.

What Students Learn

Taken from "Learning To Teach In Higher Education" by Paul Ramsden (2003). 2nd Edition. London and New York: RoutledgeFalmer, Taylor & Francis Group.

Studies of the Outcome of Learning

Level 1: General Intellectual Development

Student 1 - " I think I learnt to organise my work and myself, to think theoretically and evaluate concepts, to look things up before I made statements, and that first draft work should be left in a drawer for a week before being re-read and totally re-written several times more.

I have realised since finishing at university that I didn't gain so much a body of knowledge as an approach. I became a problem-solver.

What I believe I learnt was a capacity to apply logical principles.

... self-directed research, flexibility of approach and resourcefulness and tenacity in grappling with the varying demands of university and family life."

Student 2 - " I latched on to the idea that to pass you got a clear view of what you were expected to know, and learnt it, word for word. Not much thinking. Just learn the sacred texts. I had no more trouble passing university examinations. Unfortunately, the apparent success of this mind-stunting technique impressed me and retarded my mind's development for years to come."

Level 2 & 3: Content-Related Outcomes

"In summary, the research indicates that, at least for a short period, students retain vast quantities of information. On the other hand, many of them soon seem to forget much of it an they appear not to make good use of what they do remember. They experience many superficial changes - acquiring the jargon of disciplines, for example - but they still tend to operate with naive and erroneous conceptions. Moreover, many students do not know what they do not know: they have not developed self-critical awareness in their subjects."

Accountancy teacher - "Many students go from week to week, from topic to topic, without being able to see how anything fits together. Therefore they find the subject difficult, and this reduces their motivation to work at it."

Psychology teacher - "The general impression I get is that they don't seem to see how things hang together. They seem to treat the articles they read as if they were all disparate and not related to the same topics - there's no coherence in it, they don't see a pattern. They don't see why somebody's done something in relation to somebody else's experiment, or they don't see any kind of systematic approach to the kind of reading they're doing, or the kind of material they're being offered. They aren't able to tie it together into a package."

Year 3 Sem 2 modules

This Semester, I am taking 4 modules, excluding the UROPS module - LSM 4253 (Behavioural Biology), LSM 3251 (Ecology and Environmental Systems), LSM 3252 (Evolution and Comparative Genomics) and SSS 1207 (Natural Heritage of Singapore).

Doing UROPS, I learnt more about research and writing of paper and skills basically.

LSM 4253 also trained me in retrieving information from journal papers and writing papers as I attempted the term paper and wrote of carotenoid as an indicator of quality leading to subsequent dichromatism in Northern Cardinal. My biggest mistake is probably choosing my term paper topic, not based on what there is to find out, but based on the species Cardinal cardinalis which I adore. There was actually nothing significantly new about this topic or things I could expound on, but I search deep and hard to come up with a hypothesis, which does not hold water in the end. If I could redo this term paper, I would first do an extensive literature review on my areas of interest and what is lacking research/review papers in. My topic was very narrow as well, might not be the best choice to focus on that species alone... There was quite little papers, I realised, comparing to my friends who had 50 over. I only had perhaps not more than 20 references.

So did LSM 3251 trained me in writing papers and searching and skimming of journal papers. This it did so for the practical report on how the crustacean community structure changes with high and low tides.

I feel like I am undergoing training for Honours Year this Semester. It is something I am very grateful for. As I know how critical these skills are, struggling with them doing the papers and reports.

Very interestingly, I like the modules LSM 4253 and LSM 3252 more than LSM 3251 and SSS 1207. I find they stimulate my thinking more and require less intensive reading work than the other two. Maybe they're more interesting too?

It's very interesting how I prefer studying some things over others. But whatever it is, I will need to enjoy whatever I'm studying, in order to be a true biologist and to reap the true joy of learning. :)

Advice to a Young Scientist by P. B. Medawar

Once again, stumbled across a book in the Plant Systematics Lab library.

Once again, captivated by the preface. The reading of the preface is a relatively new habit, which I didn't use to do. I used to read mainly for the content and knowledge acquirement. Nowadays, I find myself reading, because I enjoy it. And the preface contains the heart of the writer. Why did he do it? What inspired him? Who helped him and made it possible?

"I use the word opinion to make it clear that my judgments are not validated by systematic sociological research and are not hypotheses that have already stood up to repeated critical assaults. They are merely personal judgments, though I hope som eof them will be picked up by sociologists of science for proper investigation."

"A good tutor taught the whole of his subject and not just that part of it in which he himself happened to be especially interested or proficient; to 'teach' did not, of course, mean to 'impart factual information,' a relatively unimportant consideration, but rather to guide thought and reading and encourage reflection."

How Can I Equip Myself to Be a Scientist or a Better One?

"The beginner must read, but intently and choosily and not too much."

The Scientific Process

"A young scientist has now a meter or so of bench space, let us say, a white coat, authority to use the library, and a problem that he has thought up himself of a senior has asked him to look into. To begin with, anyway, it is almost certain to be a small problem - one of which the solution will facilitate solution of something more important, and so on, until the long-term objective of the enterprise is in sight. Nonscientists cannot immediately see the connection between the lesser problem and the greater. It must often occur to a humanist as he reads the minutes of the board of the faculty of science that young scientists are engaged in comically specialized activities. A scientist might equally well wonder what there could be to engage a grown man in the study of the parochial affairs of Tudor Cornwall, because he does not realize that such an investigation is about the Reformation, a very great affair indeed."

hypothesis = imaginative preconception

"Thus the day-to-day business of science consists not in hunting for facts but in testing hypotheses - that is, ascertaining if they or their logical implications are statements about real life, if inventions, to see whether or not they work."

experiments = acts undertaken to test a hypothesis

"In the outcome, science is a logically connected network of theories that represents our current opinion about what the natural world is like."

"As a point of logic that has some bearing on the way he thinks he goes about his business, a young scientist must always avoid saying or thinking that he 'deduces' or 'infers' hypotheses. On the contrary, a hypothesis is that from which we deduce or infer statements about mattersof fact, so that, as the great American philosopher C. S. Peirce clearly recognized, the process by which we try to think up the hypotheses from which our obesrvations will follow is an inverse form of deduction - a process for which he coined the terms retroduction and abduction, neither of which has caught on."

"Before he sets out to convince others of his observations or opinions, a scientist must first convince himself. Let this not be too easily achieved; it is better by far to have the reputation for being querulous and unwilling to be convinced than to give reason to be thought gullible. If a scientist asks a colleague's candid criticism of his work, give him the credit for meaning what he says. It is no kindness to a colleague - indeed, it might be the act of an enemy - to assure a scientist that his work is clear and convincing and that his opinions are really coherent when the experiments that profess to uphold them are slovenly in design and not well done. More generally, criticism is the most powerful weapon in any methodology of science; it is the scientist's only assurance that he need not persist in error. All experimentation is criticism. If an experiment does not hold out the possibility of causing one to revise one's views, it is hard to see why it should be done at all."

By P. B. Medawar from Advice to a Young Scientist (1979). London: Pan Books (From this book! Not plagarism!)

How to Write a Review Paper by R. A. Day

Characteristics of a Review Paper
"The purpose of a review paper is to review previously published literature and to put it into some kind of perspective."

"However, the really good review papers are much more than annotated bibliographies. They offer critical evaluation of the published literature and often provide important conclusions based on that literature."

Preparing an Outline
"The cardinal rule for writing a review paper is to prepare an outline."

"aim, scope, and relevance of the topic to be reviewed"

Importance of Introductory Paragraphs
Of both the paper and of each major sections. Crucial as reader decides whether to read it or skim it or ignore it altogether based on their first impression.

Importance of Conclusions
Because the review paper covers a wide subject for a wide audience...

How does phylogenetic analysis enable evolutionary history to be traced?

Snippets from Phylogenetic Interpretations of Primate Socioecology: with special reference to social and ecological diversity in Macaca by Leslie K. W. Chan

"In recent years, however, there has been substantial development in the application of phylogenetic methods to the analysis of behavioural, ecological and social patterns in diverse groups of organisms. One common approach, referred to as character mapping or character optimization method, consists of establishing genealogical relationships of the species being compared first, and then asking whether similar traits observed among species arose in a common ancestor and have persisted, or whether they arose independently due to convergent adaptation to similar environments. This approach emphasizes the importance of a species' evolutionary history in constraining both the features it curently displays and the subsequent directions and rates of evolution open to it.

A key assumption of this approach is that just as the evolution of morphological and life-history traits, behavioural and social evolution take place in the context of phylogeny. It follows that mapping or superimposing these biological or behavioural features on a well-established phylogentic hypothesis, we may estimate when, and how many times, an observed characteristic arose in the group being studied. We can also gain insights as to which features are highly conservative, and which are most liable. In other words, this approach allows us to compare similar traits across species and to distinguish those similarities that are most likely due to descent from a common ancestor from those that evolve independently."