SIM's courses, a straw man and Constance Wu's dress
SIM's courses, a straw man and Constance Wu's dress - Hallo World !!! News Today in World, In this article you read by title SIM's courses, a straw man and Constance Wu's dress, We've prepared this article well so you can read and retrieve information on it. Hopefully the contents of the post
Article LIFT, What we write can you understand. Okay, happy reading.
Title : SIM's courses, a straw man and Constance Wu's dress
link : SIM's courses, a straw man and Constance Wu's dress
You are now reading the article SIM's courses, a straw man and Constance Wu's dress With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2018/05/sims-courses-straw-man-and-constance.html
Title : SIM's courses, a straw man and Constance Wu's dress
link : SIM's courses, a straw man and Constance Wu's dress
news-today.world | Hi there, time for a more serious post and let's go back to one hot topic on my blog: the difficult transition from being a student to working life. This is something I have blogged about a lot and recently, I had a series of exchanges from an SIM student (let's call him Tan) who posted a series of what he called 'facts' to prove that I was wrong, that an SIM degree was very useful. It looked as if most of those 'facts' were cut & pasted from your typical SIM marketing material and I tried explaining to him why none of that matters - but unfortunately, he wasn't really in the mood to listen to me. This young man basically came in looking for a fight in a, "I'm right, you're wrong, here are the facts, now admit you're wrong" mode, whilst my response was, "your argument was based entirely on the contents of the SIM syllabus and course content, you didn't once talk about the working world because presumably, you're still a student. Try seeing things from my point of view: I'm much older, I've been in the working world for an awfully long time, my perspective is quite different and if you're willing to listen, there's quite a lot I can teach you." But no, he wasn't in the mood to listen - shame really, you know when people are merely seeking confirmation bias and ignore any evidence to the contrary? There's no point in talking to people like that but I'll like to talk about the issue in general with my readers here.
I hope you're familiar with the term, "a straw man argument". In simple terms, it is a tactic used by people who cannot win an argument, so instead of dealing with a point that they have no answer to, instead they attack a "straw man", a completely different argument that was never presented by the opponent. When I talk about private universities like SIM, we go back to the same argument: smart students with good results never ever go to SIM, only dumb students with terrible results end up there. This is a fact and there's no way to avoid the issue, so this guy Tan accuses me of being unfamiliar with just how good some of the features of the current courses at SIM are. He thinks I have poor impression of SIM degrees because I am unaware of their many great features and believed that once he had 'educated' and informed me of the facts, I would change my mind about SIM graduates. And my reaction to that is simply: that's a straw man's argument. I never had a problem with the course content of what they teach you at SIM, the problem I have is with the fact that the vast majority of the students who go there have terrible results - you're in very poor company when it comes to academia when it is hard to shake that reputation. So it is not the course content, but the (mostly stupid) people who end up at SIM that is the issue. It was impossible having this kind of conversation: I made it clear what my stance was but all he wanted to talk about was the brilliant course content. So as a gatekeeper, if I see that someone has ended up at SIM instead of say NUS, then my first reaction is, oh dear, what went wrong? How did you end up in SIM in the first place? Why did you score so badly for your A levels? What happened - what is your excuse for those awful results?
When someone does so badly for their A levels, there are two possible explanations: firstly, it is possible that you're just plain stupid. Yeah that sounds cruel but when it comes to A levels, there's only so far you can get with sheer hard work, you can't get straight As by memorizing chunks of facts and then regurgitating them during the exams. So if this is the case, then I'm not interested in hiring the stupid candidates because it would be a nightmare trying to teach a stupid person to do anything. I'm not running a charity, I'm trying to hire the best person for the job, not give stupid people a chance to earn a living. The second explanation is more complex: the candidate isn't stupid, but perhaps he didn't study hard enough or didn't prepare himself sufficiently for the exam. Maybe he has a difficult family situation that has led to this unfortunate circumstances, or maybe he just lacked the self-discipline to work hard enough for the exams. Maybe something terrible happened, such as a death in the family in the run up to the exams or if the candidate actually suffered a major illness during the exam period - so even if it wasn't a case of sheer laziness, there could be plenty of quite valid reasons why the candidate did badly in those exams that landed him in SIM.
Is it perhaps too cruel to focus on one episode that went badly wrong for the candidate? Well, put yourself in my shoes for a moment - the company has advertised for one position and I receive hundreds of applications. I'm looking for reasons to say no to people, rather than reasons to say yes. That's the harsh reality of looking for work today and if you don't like that message, well then please don't shoot the messenger for delivering the bad news. Let me tell you a true story: I once worked with a man, let's call him Ronald - he was good at his job then one day, he found out that his wife was having an affair with his best friend. I'll spare you the details, but he was betrayed by the two closest people in his life. His world fell apart, he couldn't sleep, he couldn't eat, he couldn't focus on his work - he was just so consumed by all the shit that was happening in his personal life. As much as we initially felt sorry for Ronald and his predicament, it was clear that he was in no position to continue working when he could not keep his emotions in check. He realized this as well and agreed to take unpaid leave and come back when he was in a better state of mind to work - well, months passed and he never came back. I found out from a mutual friend that he began drinking very heavily and had become completely dependent on anti-depressants to just get through the day. He has not worked since. Whilst I did feel sorry for Ronald, I also realized that the company really had little choice but to let him go under such circumstances.
Then again, I've had other friends who have suffered far worse than Ronald - my friend Eileen got diagnosed with breast cancer and she never stopped working, she never lost her focus at work, like she didn't even allow herself to be late for a meeting. She told me that it was her way of coping with the cancer because if she had just sat around at home all day, thinking about the cancer, it would just drive her crazy. I have friends who have cared for their children and parents who have suffered serious illnesses and they never fell apart emotionally the way Ronald did. The fact is I want to hire someone like Eileen who has nerves of steel, you can get a cancer diagnosis one day and be back at work the next morning for nine o'clock meeting as if nothing is wrong. And whilst I feel sorry for Ronald as a friend, I did see signs that he wasn't emotionally very tough and would fall apart easily - that's not the kind of person you would want to rely on at work. So even if there is a very valid reason why the candidate performed very badly during his A level (eg. "my parents were going through a messy divorce and I was caught in the middle"), then I would be heartless and say, tough shit, that just shows that I can't count on you to hold your nerve when things get tough. I'm not going to take any chances with you; sorry, I need someone I can count on in a crisis. I want to employ someone like Eileen and not Ronald. I'm sorry if this sounds harsh but hey, welcome to the real world.
The fact is, most candidates who have degrees from private universities will never get to plead their cases to me - they would be rejected at the very first stage. I'm just going to assume that either they are stupid or they are not stupid but too emotionally unstable and immature to handle the stress that an important exam may bring, either way, I've found my reason to say no to them. Here's an important thing you need to bear in mind: I'm a gatekeeper, my job is to find fault with my candidates, my job is not to evaluate whether or not your degree programme at your university is well constructed or not. Maybe there's someone else, like a journalist who is trying to compile a definitive guide to help students choose the best universities out there, yeah maybe someone like that would be very interested in whether or not a university like SIM has interesting initiatives to help their students. But why the hell are you telling me about all the interesting new initiatives your university has? The reason why I couldn't be less interested is that it doesn't help me in my job in trying to identify the best possible candidates for the role. I believe in a very simple principle: you can't teach a person how to be intelligent, you can't make shit shine. You can enroll an idiot at Oxford university and after a few years, do you think they are going to turn him into a genius? Nope, that's not going to happen. The whole concept of Oxford university only works because the very best students in the world are fighting for a place to study there, that's why they regularly churn out so many Nobel prize winners.
In reality, it isn't hard for the universities at the bottom of the league tables to copy what some of the best universities in the world are doing - education is one industry where it is very hard to keep trade secrets. Many universities are putting everything from their reading lists to their lecture notes and even streaming their lectures live, so you don't even need to be a student at the university to access a lot of the content. Thus it is not surprising at all that a lot of the universities at the bottom of the league tables now proudly claim to be using the same materials or teaching methods as Oxford or Harvard, except of course, Oxford and Harvard accept only the most exceptional, brilliant students and it is extremely difficult to earn a place there unless you're amongst the very best in the world within your cohort. So coming to a gatekeeper like me and banging on and on about just how great the new course content is at SIM still doesn't address one fundamental point: how is all this wonderful course content going to turn you from a very stupid idiot into a brilliant genius? No, it won't have the slightest impact on your IQ I'm afraid, you're still pretty much the same person even after SIM improves the quality of their student experience in terms of implementing a better teaching programme and having a better syllabus.
And even if the courses at SIM are superbly taught, so what? Do you actually think that any of the things the students learn there are going to be relevant for them when they join the work force? The fact is the universities cannot predict what kind of job you may do in the future, so you really have no idea if what you are learning will be relevant after you have taken your last exam relating to that module. Chances are, you will never ever use any of that knowledge: instead, when you start you new job, you will have a whole new set of information you will need to acquire, information that will be directly relating to your employer's products and services. So the fact that the courses were well taught at your university really doesn't help you, it is quite simply irrelevant. But more to the point, this is really the wrong message to send to the gatekeeper when applying for a job. Should you be saying, "hey the courses at my university were really well taught" or should you be saying, "look at me, I am brilliant, I am awesome!" If you're hiding behind the course content of your degree rather than asking me to look at you as an individual, that's when I start wondering: what are you trying to hide? Why are you asking me to focus on something that is totally irrelevant instead of taking a closer look at you?
Do I sound really cruel in pointing out that you can't make shit shine? Perhaps. But on the other hand, you have all these SIM students claiming that their course is as good as any course at the top universities in the world, so by that token, SIM graduates are as good as any graduate from Harvard, Oxford or Cambridge. To which I can only smirk and say, yeah if you were that bright, you would have at least earned yourself a place at NUS. It's like an ugly and fat woman watching a video of actress Constance Wu and thinking, oh wow doesn't she look amazing in that dress - if I buy that same dress, I'll look just like Constance Wu. Erm, hello? It doesn't work like that, even if that ugly and fat woman did go get that same dress, people will notice that beautiful dress of course but that fat woman is still the same ugly and fat woman before she got that dress. Sorry if that sounds harsh but it is exactly the same shit going on here with the SIM graduates who are waxing lyrical about how wonderful their courses at SIM are. The dress doesn't make Constance Wu beautiful, she is already beautiful - likewise the course you study doesn't make you intelligent, you are still the same person with the same IQ before and after having studied the course.
To be fair, what can SIM students do to get round the fact that gatekeepers are unlikely to 'forgive' them for having messed up their A levels? Well, there is something actually, but this is not an easy solution. You see, Tan expected someone else to fix his problems, he thinks I would change his opinion of him if I realized he is studying a great course - but he needs to step out of his comfort zone and do something that will well and truly get my attention like go climb Mt Everest, break a world record, start a small business of his own or perhaps take part in a Hackathon and go on to win the grand prize; he needs to do something that he can hold up to the gatekeeper and say, "hey Mr Gatekeeper, look at me, I accomplished this, I did this - no one else has managed to do this, but I managed to smash the competition, I am awesome!" Then I would be able to say okay young man, I'm impressed. Why would going to climb Mt Everest impress me more than completing a very well structured course at SIM? Well, it's the level of entry and the risk of failure. Few people even get as far as climbing a mountain like Mt Everest for a simple reason: it is an extremely difficult task and not many people succeed. However, how difficult is it to enroll in SIM and take a course there? Not difficult at all - all you need to do is pay the fees and they just about allow any idiot to enroll in their course no matter how awful their grades are. In any case, it's not even the students paying for their own education, no, usually it is their parents spending their hard earned money on that degree. How on earth do you expect me to be impressed by that?
So that's it from me on this issue, what do you think? Can we 'fix' students with poor grades by sending them to universities with really well structured courses with the best teachers? Or is this a problem that is a lot harder to fix and that perhaps we're putting way too much faith in the power of these teaches who, let's face it, are just trying to make a living rather than perform miracles everyday at work? What do you think about the quality of the courses at private universities? Leave a comment below, do let me know what you think please, many thanks for reading.
I hope you're familiar with the term, "a straw man argument". In simple terms, it is a tactic used by people who cannot win an argument, so instead of dealing with a point that they have no answer to, instead they attack a "straw man", a completely different argument that was never presented by the opponent. When I talk about private universities like SIM, we go back to the same argument: smart students with good results never ever go to SIM, only dumb students with terrible results end up there. This is a fact and there's no way to avoid the issue, so this guy Tan accuses me of being unfamiliar with just how good some of the features of the current courses at SIM are. He thinks I have poor impression of SIM degrees because I am unaware of their many great features and believed that once he had 'educated' and informed me of the facts, I would change my mind about SIM graduates. And my reaction to that is simply: that's a straw man's argument. I never had a problem with the course content of what they teach you at SIM, the problem I have is with the fact that the vast majority of the students who go there have terrible results - you're in very poor company when it comes to academia when it is hard to shake that reputation. So it is not the course content, but the (mostly stupid) people who end up at SIM that is the issue. It was impossible having this kind of conversation: I made it clear what my stance was but all he wanted to talk about was the brilliant course content. So as a gatekeeper, if I see that someone has ended up at SIM instead of say NUS, then my first reaction is, oh dear, what went wrong? How did you end up in SIM in the first place? Why did you score so badly for your A levels? What happened - what is your excuse for those awful results?
When someone does so badly for their A levels, there are two possible explanations: firstly, it is possible that you're just plain stupid. Yeah that sounds cruel but when it comes to A levels, there's only so far you can get with sheer hard work, you can't get straight As by memorizing chunks of facts and then regurgitating them during the exams. So if this is the case, then I'm not interested in hiring the stupid candidates because it would be a nightmare trying to teach a stupid person to do anything. I'm not running a charity, I'm trying to hire the best person for the job, not give stupid people a chance to earn a living. The second explanation is more complex: the candidate isn't stupid, but perhaps he didn't study hard enough or didn't prepare himself sufficiently for the exam. Maybe he has a difficult family situation that has led to this unfortunate circumstances, or maybe he just lacked the self-discipline to work hard enough for the exams. Maybe something terrible happened, such as a death in the family in the run up to the exams or if the candidate actually suffered a major illness during the exam period - so even if it wasn't a case of sheer laziness, there could be plenty of quite valid reasons why the candidate did badly in those exams that landed him in SIM.
Then again, I've had other friends who have suffered far worse than Ronald - my friend Eileen got diagnosed with breast cancer and she never stopped working, she never lost her focus at work, like she didn't even allow herself to be late for a meeting. She told me that it was her way of coping with the cancer because if she had just sat around at home all day, thinking about the cancer, it would just drive her crazy. I have friends who have cared for their children and parents who have suffered serious illnesses and they never fell apart emotionally the way Ronald did. The fact is I want to hire someone like Eileen who has nerves of steel, you can get a cancer diagnosis one day and be back at work the next morning for nine o'clock meeting as if nothing is wrong. And whilst I feel sorry for Ronald as a friend, I did see signs that he wasn't emotionally very tough and would fall apart easily - that's not the kind of person you would want to rely on at work. So even if there is a very valid reason why the candidate performed very badly during his A level (eg. "my parents were going through a messy divorce and I was caught in the middle"), then I would be heartless and say, tough shit, that just shows that I can't count on you to hold your nerve when things get tough. I'm not going to take any chances with you; sorry, I need someone I can count on in a crisis. I want to employ someone like Eileen and not Ronald. I'm sorry if this sounds harsh but hey, welcome to the real world.
The fact is, most candidates who have degrees from private universities will never get to plead their cases to me - they would be rejected at the very first stage. I'm just going to assume that either they are stupid or they are not stupid but too emotionally unstable and immature to handle the stress that an important exam may bring, either way, I've found my reason to say no to them. Here's an important thing you need to bear in mind: I'm a gatekeeper, my job is to find fault with my candidates, my job is not to evaluate whether or not your degree programme at your university is well constructed or not. Maybe there's someone else, like a journalist who is trying to compile a definitive guide to help students choose the best universities out there, yeah maybe someone like that would be very interested in whether or not a university like SIM has interesting initiatives to help their students. But why the hell are you telling me about all the interesting new initiatives your university has? The reason why I couldn't be less interested is that it doesn't help me in my job in trying to identify the best possible candidates for the role. I believe in a very simple principle: you can't teach a person how to be intelligent, you can't make shit shine. You can enroll an idiot at Oxford university and after a few years, do you think they are going to turn him into a genius? Nope, that's not going to happen. The whole concept of Oxford university only works because the very best students in the world are fighting for a place to study there, that's why they regularly churn out so many Nobel prize winners.
In reality, it isn't hard for the universities at the bottom of the league tables to copy what some of the best universities in the world are doing - education is one industry where it is very hard to keep trade secrets. Many universities are putting everything from their reading lists to their lecture notes and even streaming their lectures live, so you don't even need to be a student at the university to access a lot of the content. Thus it is not surprising at all that a lot of the universities at the bottom of the league tables now proudly claim to be using the same materials or teaching methods as Oxford or Harvard, except of course, Oxford and Harvard accept only the most exceptional, brilliant students and it is extremely difficult to earn a place there unless you're amongst the very best in the world within your cohort. So coming to a gatekeeper like me and banging on and on about just how great the new course content is at SIM still doesn't address one fundamental point: how is all this wonderful course content going to turn you from a very stupid idiot into a brilliant genius? No, it won't have the slightest impact on your IQ I'm afraid, you're still pretty much the same person even after SIM improves the quality of their student experience in terms of implementing a better teaching programme and having a better syllabus.
And even if the courses at SIM are superbly taught, so what? Do you actually think that any of the things the students learn there are going to be relevant for them when they join the work force? The fact is the universities cannot predict what kind of job you may do in the future, so you really have no idea if what you are learning will be relevant after you have taken your last exam relating to that module. Chances are, you will never ever use any of that knowledge: instead, when you start you new job, you will have a whole new set of information you will need to acquire, information that will be directly relating to your employer's products and services. So the fact that the courses were well taught at your university really doesn't help you, it is quite simply irrelevant. But more to the point, this is really the wrong message to send to the gatekeeper when applying for a job. Should you be saying, "hey the courses at my university were really well taught" or should you be saying, "look at me, I am brilliant, I am awesome!" If you're hiding behind the course content of your degree rather than asking me to look at you as an individual, that's when I start wondering: what are you trying to hide? Why are you asking me to focus on something that is totally irrelevant instead of taking a closer look at you?
Do I sound really cruel in pointing out that you can't make shit shine? Perhaps. But on the other hand, you have all these SIM students claiming that their course is as good as any course at the top universities in the world, so by that token, SIM graduates are as good as any graduate from Harvard, Oxford or Cambridge. To which I can only smirk and say, yeah if you were that bright, you would have at least earned yourself a place at NUS. It's like an ugly and fat woman watching a video of actress Constance Wu and thinking, oh wow doesn't she look amazing in that dress - if I buy that same dress, I'll look just like Constance Wu. Erm, hello? It doesn't work like that, even if that ugly and fat woman did go get that same dress, people will notice that beautiful dress of course but that fat woman is still the same ugly and fat woman before she got that dress. Sorry if that sounds harsh but it is exactly the same shit going on here with the SIM graduates who are waxing lyrical about how wonderful their courses at SIM are. The dress doesn't make Constance Wu beautiful, she is already beautiful - likewise the course you study doesn't make you intelligent, you are still the same person with the same IQ before and after having studied the course.
To be fair, what can SIM students do to get round the fact that gatekeepers are unlikely to 'forgive' them for having messed up their A levels? Well, there is something actually, but this is not an easy solution. You see, Tan expected someone else to fix his problems, he thinks I would change his opinion of him if I realized he is studying a great course - but he needs to step out of his comfort zone and do something that will well and truly get my attention like go climb Mt Everest, break a world record, start a small business of his own or perhaps take part in a Hackathon and go on to win the grand prize; he needs to do something that he can hold up to the gatekeeper and say, "hey Mr Gatekeeper, look at me, I accomplished this, I did this - no one else has managed to do this, but I managed to smash the competition, I am awesome!" Then I would be able to say okay young man, I'm impressed. Why would going to climb Mt Everest impress me more than completing a very well structured course at SIM? Well, it's the level of entry and the risk of failure. Few people even get as far as climbing a mountain like Mt Everest for a simple reason: it is an extremely difficult task and not many people succeed. However, how difficult is it to enroll in SIM and take a course there? Not difficult at all - all you need to do is pay the fees and they just about allow any idiot to enroll in their course no matter how awful their grades are. In any case, it's not even the students paying for their own education, no, usually it is their parents spending their hard earned money on that degree. How on earth do you expect me to be impressed by that?
So that's it from me on this issue, what do you think? Can we 'fix' students with poor grades by sending them to universities with really well structured courses with the best teachers? Or is this a problem that is a lot harder to fix and that perhaps we're putting way too much faith in the power of these teaches who, let's face it, are just trying to make a living rather than perform miracles everyday at work? What do you think about the quality of the courses at private universities? Leave a comment below, do let me know what you think please, many thanks for reading.
That's an article SIM's courses, a straw man and Constance Wu's dress
Fine for article SIM's courses, a straw man and Constance Wu's dress This time, hopefully can benefit for you all. Well, see you in other article postings.
You are now reading the article SIM's courses, a straw man and Constance Wu's dress With link address https://newstoday-ok.blogspot.com/2018/05/sims-courses-straw-man-and-constance.html