Looking back one year ago, I was still deciding which university to pursue my dream course. I went the extra mile on doing research on medical university in Malaysia. I compared the scholarship offered, tuition fee, and even visited the universities one by one to observe the environment. I chose MAHSA University out of the other universities, mainly due to the adequate facilities specialized for every course. I am also fascinated by the sport complex which has well-equipped gym facilities and Olympic depth swimming pool. I like how the students here are kind towards strangers and helpful when I checked in into hostel. It was a good choice of mine. Even though I have graduated foundation in science and started medicine degree, but the cherishable foundation year will always etch in my memory.
“Ah, why would MAHSA University provide us scholarship, but we have to work back for them?” students grumbled. In my viewpoint, it was a pleasant experience. It had significantly broadened my social network and improved my soft skills. I learned more about event planning and managing skills being a facilitator for orientation. Amidst everyone’s laughter, we were totally being ourselves in the public, playing the games that were prepared by seniors. We were supposed to manage the game station but due to sufficient manpower we joined the games too. I had a whale of a time whenever working as a facilitator. Apart from that, I get to make friends from many different courses. Knowing a lot of people is a good start. When we are forced to stand on our own, living as an independent university student, assistance from friends comes in handy.
Comparing to most universities, students able to choose the minor subjects in foundation, while this will not happen in MAHSA University. I did wonder why we need to learn Information Technology (IT) and Psychology that has not much relevance on medical sciences. Admittedly, learning a new skill or knowledge will certainly bring benefits. For instance, psychology explains how memory works, which contributed to my studying technique, like how an information can stay in my mind longer. Besides that, there are a decent amount of group projects throughout foundation like publishing website, poster presentation, movie review, psychology presentation, etc. It enhanced my leadership and interpersonal skills greatly. In the meantime, I learned presentation skills from the pros in my class and their tactics on engaging the audience. For example, movie review presentation can be done in a very dull way, just by explaining the plots. However, there are students who dressed up as the characters inside and acted a movie scene, which is mind boggling. Since then, I became an eager beaver and always think of creative elements to make presentation impeccable.
“In university, you will be expected to complete independent research and wider reading”, I agree with this statement. There is no spoon feed anymore in university education system. I was not adapting to this in the beginning of foundation. I was the typical Asian student who took many tuition classes weekly since primary school. It is certainly better to search the knowledge online on our own. I developed in dept knowledge whenever I pull out all the stops, searching more on the topic. It makes us understand the knowledge rather than memorising it deadly as if everything were presented on a plate for us. In foundation, we still get to depend on lecture slides. In contrast, the lecture slides are like a reference to us in degree. “If you depend on the lecture slides only, it is not enough to score in exam,” senior advised. We need look for more information on YouTube or textbooks. Lecture slides only portray the scope that we should cover. Never say die, I compiled the knowledge from lecture slides, online and textbook then make a visual aesthetic note. Note taking is time consuming and might even be useless for people who tend to rewrite whole thing from lecture slides into own note. As the saying goes, ‘nothing ventured nothing gained’, the more we make notes, the notes will be more valuable, if we keep words short and more diagrams.
In a nutshell, it was a gratifying experience in MAHSA University. I beyond grateful for the lectures who are enthusiastic to teach extra information for better understanding on the topic and very helpful to clear students’ doubts by replying to message off office hours. I could imagine degree life would be more interesting with social interaction if there is no pandemic. I would recommend for people who is seeking for a university which is distraction-free (no shopping complex nearby), friendly-environment, experienced lecturers and well-equipped campus facilities.
Words by
Chan Hui Ling
Foundation in Science (April 2019 Batch)
Currently Pursuing her Bachelor in Medicine & Bachelor in Surgery
(MBBS)