Like this:

From last week until now, I hardly have time to breathe. I think I’d almost buried myself in the sea of thesis… reading ridiculously done thesis over and over again. Ridiculous? you might ask… well, the normal thing:

1) never justify why they need to do that research (like want to simply do the research without proper reasons or rationales),

2 ) using the wrong method to measure something impossible (like using 5 point likert scale questionnaires to measure the soft skills of student, or worse, “hubungan sosial pelajar”),

3) dubious references (I found one thesis where not a single quote is found in the reference at the back page),

4) wrong analysis (with mean score 3.5 and they still say the “tahap is sederhana”, and yet if refer back their questionnaires, 3 = tidak pasti and 4 = setuju, so what is “in between”, and most of them having standard deviation of almost reaching 1.0, that means the dispersion is big statistically!)

5) and so, making the wrong conclusion that ALL the respondents “agree”, and their “tahap” / level is very high in certain skills… what a crap!

As evaluation panels for a few semesters, marking and examining numerous thesis ( definitely over 50 thesis) is really a tiring process. Every time when I received thesis from students, I accept it with open mind, and hope that I can learn something from it, but the reality is really far from what I expected. I’m not actually complaining about the examining process actually (as it’s my duty to do so), but it’s a sad thing to see that the problems aforementioned can be found almost every semester. Students have a perception that questionnaires is multipurpose, that questionnaires can be used to measure almost everything. I think I must clarify here that the questionnaire that I meant here is those with the likert scale from 1 to 5 (strongly agree to strongly disagree). They tend to use these kind of questionnaire for almost everything, from measuring “kecekapan matematik” (which a secondary student also can tell you that you need to use standardized mathematical questions and not questionnaires) to “hubungan antara pelajar” (which you might need to use observation and not questionnaires). I almost mentioned the same thing over and over again, and I’d been termed “anti-questionnaire” person by one of the panels… haha.

But to me, you just can’t measure everything with that kind of questionnaires! If you want to know someone can sing or not, you ask that person to sing, or you give that someone “a validated questionnaire” to fill in whether he can sing well? This is a very common sense question right? But sadly those students seems to have blurred vision in this matter. I’m really worried about the quality of these kind of thesis in the long run. These trend is going on for a really long time already (early 2000 till now) and I don’t think we can really go far with these kind of research. That might explain why we’re not in the top 3000 best university in the world.

Besides thesis, I still have a whole stack of test papers yet to get marked. Today I met with one of my project student, a nice and hardworking Chinese girl. She’s telling me her progress about her seminar, which just need a few minor correction (as I expected) and some “observations” about me.

She said:” Sir, I’d notice something about you.” “Really?” I replied. “Yeah, sir, you’re walking faster than before in the faculty, and at the same time you’re holding a lot of things in your hand.”

Wow… haha. Since when I’d become so fast-paced? “Sir are you tension with jobs? it seems like a lot of responsibility has been given to you…” She added. “Yeah, you see,” then with my fingers pointing at the stack of thesis, “I’d been reading all these lately, and at the same time have a few things to do…” Trust me, I can only see that she’s shocked with the tasks and positions I’m currently holding, and I sincerely hope that it doesn’t freak her out as she’s planning to join the teaching workforce as well. She’s one of the first class student in my faculty.

But thinking back… yeah,I’d been walking faster than ever. A lot of things need to accomplished in shorter time. And my student tease me that I’m like working in Singapore or Hong Kong, where those people are walking fast as hell. OK, is that a good thing? Haha… Maybe I’m giving her a false impression that walking fast = productivity…?!

Talking to my friends over the lunch time makes me wonder, as two of my friends experienced distance relationship, am I ready to take that up? It’s not as easy according to them, and each of them have their own story and dilemma. I’m going to experience that very soon. I don’t think I’m willing to let go, but I believe I need to live with it. Not easy, but I’ll try…

The greatest distance is that you don’t know I love you while I’m just beside you.

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