By Husna Fathiyyah
GOMBAK, 5 September 2021: The seven-week IIUM.fm weekly podcast #WeHearYou has come to an end as participants recapped the first season in the seventh and last episodes yesterday.
For the episode, IIUM.fm invited the previous esteemed guests, Lina Farhanah and Siti Khadijah Mohd Bustaman.
Lina was a guest in the first episode, “The Endless MCO: When will it be over?” while Siti was invited for the fifth episode, “Healthy Lifestyle During the Pandemic”.
Recapping on the second episode, “RTL: Expectation vs Reality”, Siti observed on the disadvantages of online learning.
“There are limited students’ feedback,” she mentioned. It is known that students tend to get quiet during online class, and instructors have difficult time assessing the students’ level of understanding.
The senior Psychology officer of IIUM Kuantan was concerned with students’ social isolation under a prolonged term of online learning.
In physical class, students are motivated to learn due to their surrounding friends and environment. Students could take some time off studying by interacting with their peers. However, online learning does not bear the luxury of one, causing students to burn out easily.
Siti also expressed her worries with students’ screen exposure. Online learning forced students to spend hours in front of laptops, which strains students’ eyes.
She also pointed out that it’s hard to prevent students from cheating during online learning.
However, she mentioned, it is important for students to adapt to online learning by now due to the circumstance of the pandemic.
“You can use Pomodoro technique to help you relieve your stress while listening to online class.”
Pomodoro technique is a method designed to help students to focus. According to Siti, after thirty minutes of studying, take a five minute break to relax the muscle.
“With physical class, you could refocus by taking a minute to look around, or talk to friends. You could exercise your muscles by walking to class. But not in online class, where you would grow stiff and tired due to sitting down.”
One of the overlooked issues with students are working students. Not all students are born with silver spoons, some resorted to working part-time as waiters and riders to pay their college bills. COVID-19 has imposed a bigger challenge on working students. IIUM.fm has brought this topic for discussion in their third episode, “In the Life of Working Student”.
Being a third year Law student, Lina shared her experience as an intern student working from home.
Just like other working students in the times of pandemic, she is struggling with time management. When there are abundance of workload, she would subconsciously confined herself to the room and forgetting to eat.
Lina also struggles with meeting filial duties as a daughter, such as cooking and cleaning as working from home has interfered with that.
At the same time, she expressed her worry about the lack of hands on activity in regards to doing internship at home.
In response to her view, Siti offered an advice in stress management for working students like Lina.
“To manage the stress, we must first acknowledge our underlying feelings and emotions.”
Siti pointed out that ‘burnt out’ gradually started from pushing away such feelings of stress and tiredness. By acknowledging them, we could lower down the cortisol hormone which is responsible for ‘stress’.
The next tip was time management. As work would be the top priority, Siti’s advice for students was to prepare beforehand for their study.
“Fill in your attendance, and ask for recordings from your lecturers. After that, you need to double your effort with revising your study notes after working.”
She recommended working students to revise their study notes. As each student is different, it is best for students to take note of their studying habit, and try their best to revise the topics, before or after class.
COVID-19 has been affecting the country for almost two years, which has affected our everyday life, including the Independence Day celebration. In regards to the sixth episode, “Merdeka: Demi Negara”, Siti brought to light on her efforts to nurture her children with the spirit of patriotism.
“As a mother, I could not really celebrate Independence Day. However, I try my best to instil the spirit into my children.”
Accordingly, she guided her children into entering Independence Day-themed contests, such as drawing and colouring contest, as well as pantun recitation contest. To her relieve, her children enjoyed their participation as well.
The pandemic has also forced IIUM administration to put the whole Gombak campus under a lockdown, and there has been numerous students affected by this, which leads to some stranded in the mahallah for weeks and months. IIUM.fm has highlighted this issue in their third episode, “I’m Stuck!”. Lina too, was one of the affected students.
Lina was among the lucky ones who have friends around her while stranded in the campus for a whole semester. To alleviate their boredom, she played a lot of games with her friends, such as Call of Duty: Mobile and Uno FLIP! For stress management, whenever she has problems weighing down her mind, she has friends to count on too.
“It was not like we would set up a night and said, ‘oh let’s talk about our problems.’ We would go to our friends’ room and confided in them about our issues.”
For the overall season, Siti observed that the podcast has grown and taught the crews useful skills such as hosting and critical thinking.
The podcast ended on a joyous note as everyone expressed their happiness with the current season.
The podcast recent episode was hosted by Ahmad Razali, Aisha Ayub and Naqibah Alias.
Interested readers can listen to the podcast again at IIUM.fm’s official YouTube channel.***