Suara Hati Ayahku

Salam

My friends and I were with Prof Dr Vijay Kumar yesterday.  He came all  the way from Otago University, New Zealand.  The size of the audience 40 ~ 50 only.  Great!

It was about PhD supervision. This is my second seminar about the same topic.  The last was with Colonel (rtd) Dato' Prof Dr Kamaruddin Kachar (UniSel) and his consultant team in April 2012 recently. Since I were new .. in many things .. the university asked me to attend Vijay's talk.  What a day it was !

I learnt few things there (for sharing )  :

(i)  don't check the english of the students doing the proposal.  You are asked to check n contribute in the contents only.  Let the PGS take care of the english.  Do you have english service here?

(ii)  MOU with the students .  What is expected of you as a supervisor and what is expected from him/her as a student.  One of my favourite lines was .. you must come on time.  If it is 0800 am then it must be0800 am.  Not 0834 am with so many funny excuses.

(iii)  don't work so hard. Just do 0900 - 0500 regime.  That is very good indeed.  The rest is for your family. Don't wait until your kid(s) have left you - the nest - and u start to realize .. they have all  grown up without you in front of their eyes.  Don't exert so hard ..  to produce high impact factor ..journals ..  do what u can do .. the best that u can.  He..he..  good point here.

in the eyes of your growing kid(s)  at home .. ingat nor ..

To the academic world , you may be their star.  with so many high impact factor journals.
but to a growing kid (crying with a dog) ... you are his world!  see my spelling   WORLD!

my last sentence i picked from his talk was:

"..  it is not your words(speech, lecturers) that they remember ..
it is not the delicious malaysian food that they remember ...
but it's what you make them feel ...  this they will remember the rest of their lives ...undergoing a post graduate studies in Parit Raja, Johor, Malaysia."

so did you make them feel appreciated .. for they chose you to be your supervisor ..out of so many other supervisors .. in the entire world?

With that .. i part this writing with ..

Have a great day ahead ..supervising your postgraduate students.

He..he..

wallah huaklam.