Thank god, finally I can have some times to write my blog and record my life here. For this time, I would like to talk about my study life here and write down what I found the different in education system.
Time, we are having class from Monday to thurs, from 10 to 1pm. But actually, we only have 3 days class; Thursday is for us to meet our supervisor for project. Everyday, there is Lecture on 10 to 11am, everyday different subject lecture by different lecturer. Then seminar class (divided to smaller group, 4 classes for discussion, which guided by 4 different lecturer) is from 11:30 to 1pm.
About lecture, Hm… lecture is started on 10 to 11am. But our lecturers need us to be inside the class 10 minutes before. They always emphasize it and they hate student who come at 10, and even later, then you will see their black face and looking at you when you coming inside the class. They so care about the time to start a class. Why I said is “our lecturers”? Normally, 1 lecture only has 1 lecturer. But as there are 4 seminar groups which guided by 4 lecturers, so the lecturers also need to come attend the class together with us. It is very surprising me as the all the lecturers are lectured with us, though they already have the knowledge. During the 1 hour lecturer, the different with m’sia is that, they will tell you what is the aim of this lecture, what you will learn and know from this lecture. It is like, at the end of the class, they want you get something from each lecture. They are using powerpoint for each lecture (no much different from m’sia). But we do not need to copy notes during the lecture, except some explanation that we would like to take notes. It is because all the powerpoint of each lecture is already on blackboard (our online blackboard.)
Let me explain their system in details. We have text book for each subject. But the text book is not like the book we have in our education system in m’sia which explains to you what is this and that. The text book is compilation of journal. The famous journal in mass media. Then for each lecture, we have to read 2 reading/journal from the textbook a day before the lecture, so we can have some idea before the lecture. The journal is chosen for us to read because it is some famous scholars has raise some important point on certain topic. For example, one of the lectures is talk about “Representation”, then we have to read the journal of Stuart Hall who words is recognized in giving the argument on “representation”. The textbook does not tell you what is what from a to z, it is to tell you who has raise some crucial argument that contribute the idea to our mass comm in order to understand something, just like the example that I give, representation of Space. It allows us to aware what is space, how we make sense of space around, while bring it in mass media, esp. to understand the space that portray in film.
Normally during the lecture, the lecturer will give more other scholars’ word in explaining an idea in different perspective. So we get know there are some people argue they agree this because of what what what, and another school disagree because of what what what. So, even in our assignment, there is no restriction if you can argue a point persuasively with support from scholars.
So, library is our favorite place as we need to find books and scholars’ work from there to support our argument in each of our assignment. In m’sia, we only can borrow max 5 books per student, and we normally borrow less than 3 books coz’ the books are not enough and lack of attraction. (Even TAR College can consider a big and modern library among the college in m’sia) So, at here, when the officer from the library told us we can max borrow 15 books from the library, we made a joke that it is too much for us, and we do not need so many books… But now we know the joke is not funny at all, coz’ we now need more than that. We always borrow fully 15 books and even it is not enough for us coz’ there are so much book we would like to borrow and read and use it for assignment. The books look interesting and every book also seem like useful for our knowledge and for our assignment. Also, I like our library coz it is modern architecture library, the environment is super nice, the view is perfect and it is really really convenient as we can reserve or read a book online and there is so many free journal for us (as the library pay a lot of money for copyright to own it.) We now have borrowed some movie from this library to watch for our own entertainment and also for assignment. But mostly it is awarded movie, international movie, non-hollywood movie, French movie and… Sometimes we have to watch it in library as some of the old movie is not available in DVD but tape. So, there is TV and headset provide to us. We can share a tv set in a group of people to watch, or if in a big group, we can book a room for screening. Hm… the movie that we have watched from library is Blade runner (Tech Noir) (a weird movie), The piano teacher (French movie, super “geng”, wanna vomit after watching it), Indiana Jones (A typical Hollywood steven spielberg’s movie), A fistful of dollars (A western movie during 60s), and Tombstone (A western movie also… coz’ going to choose western movie as example for 1 of my assignment, hehe…). So the library here is not a boring place, have books, movie, nice environment for study, always there are more than enuf computer are provided, we can have our own email add and our lecturer always directly contact us through it, we can have off-campus service with using its service online, there are many other features of the library here and I can’t finish to list it out. Just like what the officer said, they are here to help us. They always want to make things easier for us.
Then now I would like to describe the subject I study here… Hm.. how to describe leh… It is complicated system, but I try to make it easier. It is like… we have 3 main subjects
a) Comm. Analysis,
b) Media Business & Institution,
c) Visual comm.&Analysis
, and each of the 3 subject have 2-3 sub-subject (we called it block). And each of the blocks need about 1 month to complete. Then for this first month, the block for each subject is like following:
a) Comm Analysis – block à Representation
b) Media business & Institution à Media Business
c) Visual comm. & Analysis à Hollywood & Genre
Representation (Monday class) is talk about how we make sense, understand sth
(mental representation) and construct meaning by using language. But as we study mass comm, we are focusing how the meaning in media is constructed, especially movie. And also, we focus on how space is represented in a movie. Coz’ space is involving culture, personal experience, society. I think it not only bring me the knowledge to analyse the space in movie, but also make me aware how we make sense on things and our environment, so indirectly, v can understand audience better on how they think and perceive sth. The assignment for this block is to analyse the movie (Matrix or Blade Runner), how space and the city is represented in the movie. For me, it is the hardest assignment among the 3 block, space eh, the meaning does not fixed… Worry debate wrongly.
Then second is Media Business (Tuesday Class). For the name itself is already describe what is it about. We need to know how a media business works, the development and risk it need to take and blah blah… and to be aware on some big big media institution like CNN and BBC. For this block, no paper work is needed but presentation. There are 5 topics for us to choose, such like globalization& ownership, law& regulation… And my group (2 person per group), we choose to argue “Media business: Risky Business?” and choose 1 media institution as example. And we not yet decide to stand 1 side or neutral… 
The last block is Hollywood& Genre (Wednesday). It is to study the different type of movie, mainly focus on Hollywood products. Each week we will study different genre (category of movie) and watch movie for each genre a day before the class in order to understand the lecture on next day clearer. There r 4 genre we study for this block: Musical, Film Noir, Western and Comedy. The example for musical is like “Singing in the rain”, and we watched Chicago as example. The Film noir is like detective movie, but normally is discuss on the black& white movie at the past. Hm… I quite interested on this kind of movie, but my classmates all think it is boring a genre. And we have watched “Double Indemnity” inside the class as example. Then is Western, or can consider as cowboy movie, but not like Brokeback mountain. The cowboy movie which have cow (haha), cowboy and normally have conflict between good and bad character. The movie we watched is “Shane” (a black& white movie). Then the last is comedy…Comedy is those movie which to provoke laughter and now I only found most of the comedy movie is to make fun on powerful ppl in which this concept is known as “antiauthoritarian” and nowadays there is increasing no. movie of romantic comedy, which trying to promote or reinforce on the current value of relationship inside our society (surely Hollywood movie is focus on western society). Well, I am not moviegoer and go cinema often. But from this block, I watched a lot of movie in only 1 month time and the most interesting is some of them can’t be watched in m’sia. Its assigment is about how "genre" this concept is found useful for us in movie. This block has draw my interest on movie and allows me to understand a movie besides just watching it for entertainment.
The last subject (Thursday) is mass comm research project. We allow to choose the subject area we would like to research. There are more than 20 subject we can choose, from media studies, advertising, video games, woman and men magazine, to film noir, visual comm., graphic design, audience, gender and… The subject area I choose is Internet Community. Before that, I planned to choose advertising as it is my major in m’sia. But as our lecturer encourage us to explore sth different, so I decide to choose internet community. The focus of this research and its title I have spend sometimes to construct it and finally, here is my title: “Constructing self-identity in virtual community: Deceptive identity? A case study on friendster.com.” So, I will choose some of the users from friendster.com as my participant and I’m going few weeks time to observe them and interview them in order to get my finding for my research… SO, my friends, take notes, I may need your help to become my research subject…
Is there anything I have leave out when talk about the study here? I also dunno, coz’ too many things can tell. Ah… I rmb la, I want to talk about our lecturers. There are 5 lecturers… But, I better talk about them next time.
The end for this post, hoping I never forget every little thing about the study here.
**Sun**
After presentation, we, the first day presenters of class 1.
Friendly Nath
Helpful Alan
