Monday, August 11, 2008

Bz, bz, bzzz!

Oh my God, I have been extremely busy these past few weeks. Even though I'm only taking 15.5 credit hours, the workload is by far the heaviest compared to the previous semesters. Whoever said taking Human Sciences is "easy" can get lost. I mean, a simple article review for a level 1 subject is already a lot of work in itself - we have to find the correct and original article using the online database (which is not very easy since there are like, millions of articles and you're only given the author's name and half of the title), then review and relate the article to the various underlying psychological concepts. And being IIUM, we also have to relate it to Islam. Its interesting if you have plenty of time to do it, but when you have other articles waiting to be reviewed...sigh.

The coolest assignment is probably for my Abnormal class. We watch movies related to psychology and answer the various questions given by the lecturer for individual assignments. Who'd have thought that there were so many psych movies out there? Hannibal, Silence of the Lambs, Benny & Joon (starring Johnny Depp) and Girl Interrupted (starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie) are just a few. We even have to do a group presentation on a movie...of course, we have to diagnose the character's psychological disorder first and stuff. Here's a list of psych movies for those who are interested.

Another pretty cool assignment is for my Public Relations class. We have to choose any organization as our client and prepare a comprehensive PR proposal for them, plus add some recommendations on how to solve the client's problems or improve its current state. And the client has to be a real, factual client, so we have to collect some background info on them. My lecturer suggested reading the newspapers to see which companies are currently facing any problems, but I can't seem to find the right company yet. Any suggestions, anyone?

Of course, there are other assignments such as a major research proposal and test administering assignment. But I guess that's student life...better enjoy it while we can. And at least our daily activities vary from day to day. Have you ever thought about animals and what they do during the day? Let's take bees as an example. For those who have seen the Bee movie, I'm sure you can understand. They do the same thing every single day. Imagine doing the same thing every single day of your life until the day you die??? Shudder. So we should be grateful to Allah for creating us as human beings...and I should probably stop groaning and sighing and listing all my assignments and actually start doing them.

“A good book is the best of friends, the same today and forever.”
- Martin Tupper