I'm done with Semester 2 of school with the release of results yesterday morning.


I'm super proud of myself for getting my first ever A WITH THE PLUSSSSSSS. My results were rarely something that I'm proud of. I'm really not good at studying. It's pretty evident, looking at both my grades from undergraduate and graduate course, that I do less well for theoretical modules and better for modules which are less theory intensive and more applicable in real life.

This module that I got A+ for is called Common Psychiatric Disorders in Adults taught by AP Dr Caroline Lim. Our lecturer is a really excellent prof. If I had the chance to take another module taught by her again, I would. She is an educator. She is very affirming and she really goes the extra mile (she probably thinks that she's just doing her job as an educator) to ensure that we understand the course content well and know how to apply in our daily lives. There were only 10 people in the class but she made it comfortable for anyone to ask questions and speak up in class. I honestly never liked speaking in class because I am afraid that my answer is wrong or that I'm unable to express myself clearly and concisely. But she makes the class' atmosphere comfortable for anyone to speak up. I think I talk more in her class than any other class? Even when a classmate says something which may not be right, she would still be very affirming and would be like "hmmm... yea... yea... quite close". And then she'll still try to pick out the good points of what that classmate said and clarify further. In general, you just know that there's no judgment towards any of her students.


When I received such a feedback for my 6th and final assignment for the module, I felt like my confidence got boosted like a billion times. LOL. Even the simple act of writing my name in the comment, I felt acknowledged. So many appreciations and affirmation (in black boxes and pink underline) and also some constructive feedback (in purple underline) to challenge my thinking further. Yes, we had 6 assignments in total and she made the effort to give thorough feedback for every single one of them. And she teaches 2-4 other modules I think. Wow @ that amount of dedication???

She definitely challenges us to think more deeply, encourages us to voice out dilemmas and discuss differing view points. Basically, she showed us what it means to face the subjectivity of diagnosis, which I think is really beautiful as a professional to face our own limitations. Mental health is definitely not so simple, especially for individuals with possible co-morbid diagnoses, is not very expressive or have poor memory/cognition and diagnosis at a hospital may be done together in discussion with a multi-disciplinary team for such complex cases. With discussions, different professionals may have differing opinions about the presenting signs and symptoms.

Suddenly this post sounds like a module review. HAHAHA.

Anyway, I'm just happy :)

Yesterday was a pretty draining day too, because of all the meetings (plus I was sleep deprived cuz I slept late the night before and woke up early when I jerked out of bed suddenly). I had a meeting in the morning with the other case managers regarding review comm reports and right after that another meeting to talk about MSF advisory on COVID-19 management and SOP matters. I appreciate that the Home really keeps us more in the loop by having more frequent meetings! And lastly in the evening, I had another meeting with AWARE team & volunteers.

Currently I'm involved in a research project by AWARE. So my role as a volunteer is to assist in administering research questions + do needs assessment for the application of financial assistance for low income families + sharing additional resources if applicants need them, mainly targeting women who are bread winners/single mums/self-employed persons/foreign spouses. So we've all done the first round of interviews, in late May, and yesterday's meeting was about getting feedback about the process, sharing and reflecting about the experiences. I felt that the facilitator was really empowering and encouraging! Wow. I mean interviewing applicants and administering research questions sound really simple but in actual fact it's not. The volunteers were sharing about being mindful about language, tone of speech, power differential (between interviewer and interviewee, between govt and applicants), boundaries etc and there were so much to learn from each other. I liked that AWARE actually made the effort to set up a meeting like that to reflect and share experiences.

Feeling all the positive vibes from yesterday! I do hope that I can be a good facilitator in the future and a good worker. Actually, I should be writing my reports and doing work now. But here I am writing a blog post. Haha. I just felt like I needed to write this post to kick start the "writing". So yes, I gotta go now to do some real work, finally. HAHAHAH.

&the pages keep turning.