Another thing passes by and another thing learned from the blunders......

Orientation was finally done last night. And its time to hit the books asap. Got only 9 weeks left to study everything. That excludes pbl n csu -.- So feedback on orientation this year. Hmm.... Lets start with the juniors. Maybe its just me but i think that the juniors this year are so much pampered. They say the M1** batch are always the most fun ones. The tradition broke down this year i guess. Back in my time, i can tell that all of us were very much enthusiastic about orientation. Maybe its becuz it was conducted differently this year? Back then it was all ragging n apple polishing but now its gonna be lame stuff like ' whoever gets me a cup of water 1st gets my signature! '.......

I strongly think that orientation should be about ragging. Not so that they earn respect for us seniors n all but mainly to make them realize, that if you want something, you'll have to put more effort in it. Dont just say you want it, act it out. P.S YOU'RE IN MED SCHOOL NOOB!! Last night, some junior actually come to me to get my signature. And you know very clearly how things are suppose to be, I need to know your whole group before I even give you my sig...The fact that you came to me, taking advantage of the time and place really reflects how you and your whole group think. That particular group didnt deserved my signature at all. Not even half of them was there. I never thought about it that time though I had a feeling that i shouldnt be giving it out like that. Anyways I agreed to just give it to him. And guess what? I ALREADY SIGNED THAT FREAKING PAPER!!!! Signature hunt is kinda like ice breakers- intro between juniors and seniors. So it shows that the fella didnt get the objective of this whole thing. Being so kiasu and focusing on winning. So what if you turned out the winner? You'll feel more privileged? You do get more bragging rights but if you didnt get the main point of the whole thing then i brand you the winner amongst all losers.

So that was the juniors flaw. Another flaw would be the OOs. I dont really have much info or right to discuss bout it but I somehow feel like some of the OOs were not taking this orientation seriously. Its actually proven too. Treasure hunt was already a train on its way to collision. To make it worst some OOs actually accelerated this by not following rules, skipping stations, forcing their way thru, not reading the booklet, etc etc.....Should OOs be interviewed for the next orientation? During variety night, multimedia had a hell of a time dealing with the audio and pics from groups. Fact is, many of the committee members including me contacted most of the OOs about this matter. So why were they given only 10 minutes before every performance? That will be explained in the next flaw....

Finally, the orientation committee. Most probably the biggest flaw of all and to be on par with the juniors level of 'flawness'. Firstly, the our flaws are mostly due to bad timing, improper selection of posts and severe lack of communication. The committee was selected in the wrong time. We were naive and immature about joining the committee. Well I dont think i wanna address it to everyone but this is how i personally dubbed myself as a committee member.

I constructed a plan for TH with the core point that it must be different from everything else since the main element of orientation was no longer allowed. I was ambitious and wanted to make TH compensate for the that void this orientation had. TH after all is the second most fun event. I always knew that there would be unforeseen mistakes and problems. I took measures too. But what I didnt see, was that this plan, can never work ,becuz i was doing it alone. I never intended to do it alone. Its just that my partner didnt see it the way i did. I dont blame him cuz his argument has its good points. But it came too late. Changing the whole thing would mean a waste of time and effort for me and its not that my plan was completely complex and hard. It would have been easier and interesting if I had enough time and help. But at that moment, handling the whole thing alone was the only option. Yes I could have formed my own help crew to deal with my plans. But that would only be disrespecting my partner and i would never want that to happen. My ego played a part in this as well so i have no right to blame him or say that he wasnt doing his job. Thankfully he did helped out with the parts which he agreed on. It wasnt much but at least he helped. In the end, as I feared, there was a lot of flaws in my planning. But those were greatly minimized thx to the whole committee that relentlessly help me out. I appreciate it a lot. Thank you.

All in all, orientation was fun and successful. This applies to the juniors who has no prior experiences and those who who wanna think so. But to me, i personally think it wasnt such a big success as it is. Everything went according to plan most of the times but there is a lot more room for improvements. We are no professionals. We learn anatomy, biochem, immunology, etc etc....Though the expectations were high, I think this was the best we could have pulled out having given all these time constrains and limits. So...... ....... ........it wasnt that bad la :P