Class in session

My professor for my class on substance abuse reminds me of a provision shop ah pek! He came to class in a pair of old-fashioned black rubber sandals worn with socks. Brown pants and white short-sleeved shirt with white singlet peeking from under.

Classic.

He pronounces heroin as HER-ROY-YEARN, and for a moment I really thought there was such a thing called "inherent abuse". Like, I don't know, someone is abusing himself internally? Then on reading the notes, I realised it was "inhalant abuse" ie glue-sniffing and the like, and not "inherent abuse" that he kept repeating. BEST.

Despite these inhalant flaws, oops I mean inherent flaws (hee), he's quite a humorous fella with a lot of degrees and achievements to his name. Doesn't look like it, but the books he's written and the national committees he's sat on are all proof I guess. Class should not be boring :)

Have another interesting and funny lecturer for my other class on contemporary social work practice. He claims not to be anti-establishment, just refusing to "stand on the Establishment because the tea was not nice enough", hinting at the teas that the ruling party has invited him to in the past. Haha.

Smart guy, very opinionated and has had a great deal of field experience.

What scares me a little is how, on the pretext of getting to know everyone in his class by name (and saying "Don't get the wrong idea, I'm not marking you), he keeps coming back to you for answers to questions that he asks. And he locks his gaze on you.

For instance, once, he somehow came onto the topic of the PUB bill. He asked himself: "What's my PUB bill?" Looking like he was digging through his records in his mind, he suddenly turned to one student and asked: "What's your PUB bill?" Student, shocked, answers. Prof then says: "Is it? Oh...So, what's your name?"

Random.

Lecturers aside, I think I'm suffering from school anxiety. Aargh! I feel like a primary one girl on her first day at school all over again! I think it's my perfectionist streak at work. AGAIN. Having quite a number of people in class who have had some sort of experience in social work, I realised that I'm worrying that I can't keep up enough with them. That I don't know enough to answer the questions the right way, that I might seem juvenile in my analysis of cases.

Paranoid.

At the same time, I'm excited at learning, all over again. Can't wait to buy my textbooks later on. I feel the lecture notes are too sketchy, I catch no ball ah! I need to read read read.

Attending a post-grad class is really different from sitting in an undergrad class. Everyone is game to participate, people challenge, people share. Really interesting.

My classmates - the ones I've got to know so far - are a pretty unique bunch of people. There are two who work in the women's prison (AIYO, one of them said she's seen my name in the papers before!), one pretty Hong Kong girl who was a teacher back home and who recognised me in class cos she had seen me registering at the school a month back!

Then there's this girl from China who studied computer engineering at NTU, didn't want to work in that field, took off to Zambia and Shanghai to do volunteer work! There's one who works with the intellectually disabled, and there're those who work for bigger organisations like NCSS and MCYS. Many many more...

We also have to do a group project for one class, and I was quite averse to it at first. I'm a hermit. I like to work independently lah. But after meeting my group last night, I thought, they look quite nice. Should be ok I guess!