learning to play the game…
adaptation is an issue for most people, especially if u have to throw away what u think was right and open up yourself to the new things you never thought is possible.
many will resort to complaining about the new things that they are not familiar to, not because the new things aren’t as good as the old ones, but because they are still not used to the new things to really appriciate them…
coming to russia to study medicince meant that all my 11 years of experiece of studying in malaysia using british education system was useless…as the education system here is totally different from what we had back home…so it means that i’m back to square one. i had to relearn a new way to study so that i could cope well…
exams and tests system here sounded absurd to me when i first came here, but nevertheless i tried my best in this "game", since i chose to involve myself in it in the first place….and somehow i managed to play the game well, despite the large difference of this new game with the previous one…
now, i do have problem with the juniors complaining about the education here, when they are trying to compare it with malaysia, uk, australia or any other places.they have problems with the teacher’s teaching because the teachers do not teach like malaysian teachers do. they complain because the lecturer do not print the lecture notes for them like in other countries like uk or australia, they complain of the teacher’s bad english, when in fact theirs is not that good either….
the main problem here is adaptation. failure to adaptate to the new studying environment, not used to the russian slang of english, and not able to copy the lecture notes because you do not have a hard copy of it is not good, but it could still be helped. but REFUSING to adaptate to this new game you are involving yourself into is worse.you see faults and weakness in everything here except your own…now tht is malignant.
the excuse of not being able to do well because of the poor education system here is just lame. you might say that you would do much better if the exam system is according to the one in uk or malaysia…that you would score better if the exam is not as subjective and depend on the examiner alone. you would probably copy better if the lecturer had better command of english..
but in my opinion, you are just weak. you are not as brilliant as u think you are, because you aren’t able to adaptate to the new rules here. you are not a good "gamer", as your mind and body are only able to work stereotypically. and to compare to a person who can adaptate well and do not complain as much, you probably would loose, even if playing the "OLD GAME"…..
it is often what we think we know already that prevent us from learning— claude bernard.
as i’ve mentioned, if we keep having bad impression on something, or somebody, we would never learn anything from it. thus we have do open up ourselves to the new things, not to fear the unknown, but trying to understand it and like it, so that we could gain the most of it…
yes your english is probably much better than the russian teachers….but you need to learn the knowleges in their head for your future profession, while they do not need to learn english to survive on their profession. so if we are just going to give up on their bad english, we are the ones who are going to suffer later on…
russia is famous for medicine for a certain reason. there must be a good explaination for that. it seems bad just because we are not familiar with it. all we need is time and faith… and the willingness plus the ability to accept new surroundings…
so my advice is stop with the obsession that you were good back home and the reason that u are not so good now is because the poor education system here. start to learn how to play this "new game" you are involving yourself into, and who knows, one day you would probably be as good as you were back home in malaysia….
