The Real Work Begins

With only a few weeks ahead of me to get my book out of the layout stage and into the final, printing stage, I'd better get moving.

Once the book is printed, I'm going to have to organise the book launch. It's going to be slightly daunting, to be honest, but I'm going to have my publishing team guiding me along the way.

Hey, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, I need to approve the layout changes, and there are quite a few! The slightly annoying thing is that some of these changes are changes back to what I originally wrote, but was changed during the editing process. Essentially, I'm doing two times the work for the same result.

Point to learn here: We need to better communicate with our team to make sure things like this don't happen to waste time and energy.

Welcoming June with a Networking Meeting

June is finally here. I've also just finished my last school project for the first half of the year, and here comes my breather. Whew!

To reward myself, I got myself a new keyboard. My old one was annoying me to no end due to lousy key placements and bad tactile feedback, as well as stuck keys. This one, the C3500 from HP, is so much better! I thoroughly recommend it. It does come with a mouse that I don't need at the moment, but it's always good to have a spare.

So this June is all about reconnecting with people, plans, and projects to come. My 3 p's. To kick that off, I attended a networking meeting yesterday. I was a little apprehensive because I had lessons in the morning, and was concerned that I would be too tired to interact. 

To make up for that, I went home to rest before the networking meeting and was glad that I did. It was (surprise!) a gathering of introverts. Of course, I know it sounds ridiculous, but that's because society has always placed erroneous labels on introverts like 'shy' and 'unsociable'.

Well, I got to meet a couple of familiar faces and a number of new ones. It wasn't a business networking session but a more casual, social one. Thus, there was much less pressure to talk about what we do and more freedom to talk about who we are instead.

I hope to meet some of them again some time soon. It's always great to meet people with whom we share an affinity.

End of May

As we approach the end of May, it feels like time is really flying by in 2016. Before I know it, almost half the year is over!

My forever-busy-Singaporean mind tells me that I could have done so much more than I have so far, but my more rational mind is telling me that I have already accomplished a number of things and that I'm on my way to accomplish more. Perhaps it is slightly slower than it could possibly have been, but why beat myself up over it? At least I am still moving forward.

The end of May is also the end of the first half of the school year. There have been a large number of projects this year, and one more next week that will spill into the first week of June. Finally, I can have a break before the craziness starts again.

I am seriously considering dropping some of my roles in preparation for new ones. I would like to focus less on teaching in schools and more on teaching adults. I see a way forward and I am keen to take it. 

Here's to a bright future moving forward!

Hands-on

I spent much of the last week on a programme for a few schools. It's the same programme, but the company I'm working with has rolled it out into numerous different schools. It's F1 in schools.

Of course, the students don't get to race an actual car. Instead, they race car models that they sand down (from the rough form) and paint  after they design it. Of course, there is a fair bit of theory and explanations, which isn't nearly as engaging as getting their hands dirty.

The difficulty comes when there is a little too much time allocated to theory and not enough activities to do. Of course, I could easily come up with a whole slew of stuff to engage them, but I can't assume that the school will be fine with me deviating from the main subject, which is to bring the F1 in schools programme to the students.

All in all, it's pretty clear that hands-on activities are far more popular than theory and even designing. Now, if only there's a way to get more of them.

I've always felt that the education system lacks emphasis on physical skills. Yes, there is woodworking and plastic molding in Design & Technology (D&T), but it's not quite the same, is it? What about day-to-day needed knowledge like changing a light bulb, fixing a leaky tap or sewing a fallen button?

Sure, they seem mundane and unglamorous, but these are useful skills. As much as doctors, lawyers and engineers are important, so are mechanics, repair workers and electricians. Daily life isn't about glamour and glitz, as much as the media may try to say otherwise. It's about having the know-how and applying it properly.

Here's to hoping for a better-skilled future, where people know how to build, cook and create!