Lecture 20 Friday 3-4 pm DK1 5th April 2013 (Week 7) before semester break

Some of you email me the following request:
regarding the last day before mid sem break which happen to fall on the 5th of April, can i suggest that we shift our class to to other day before that day, preferably on thursday, perhaps? I strongly believe that on that day, most of the students, if not all, will be heading back to their respective hometown. For your information, our class on that day ends at 12pm. Your lecture being the last which is at 3pm, hence the reason of my raising of this issue to you so that all of the students can go back earlier, considering the fact that most are not Penangites.

Thanks for your consideration and i do hope that sir can announce as soon as possible, preferably in tomorrow's lecture. Thank you.

This is my reply and answer to such request:

I disagree that we should take vacations over our PNP a.k.a. "Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran" lightly. Shifting to accommodate vacation is never my priority. If I were to think about my vacation, I would have cancelled the class and be on a week long vacation for this school holiday.

Let the students be off as it is their choice in life whether they want to be successful or have other things that they value more than the university work.

I will not even back off even when the VC says so as we have a very tight schedule and any unnecessary thing may have derailed the syllabus.

Another thing is that I will really stress that any change in schedule is not an easy task to do and may have cause a lot of other arrangements and inconveniences:
1) The problem with lecture hall with air-conditioner (remember the 3-week fiasco) arrangement is always an issue.
2) We have "Orang Kurang Upaya" OKU in our class, any room may not fit the constraint that we have.
3) Sense of responsibility among the students that we have to make a do with what we have as we cannot do things according to our whims and fancies (of course the same hold true for the lecturers).

P/S: I may hold Quiz 2 (maybe 1-2 %) on that day to reward students attended the class.

Regards
Dr Tun Zainal
11:25 am
29th March 2013