Secondly, it has also helped me realise that I don’t need to be a perfect teacher. Maybe this is also because of my past – or maybe my past experiences have merely excerbated the natural tendency of my personality to blame myself for everything that goes wrong. If I have failed in my little duties, if I receive any sort of complaint, if I make a mistake or an error, I can magnify it all out of proportion and get really down on myself. Even if I have 99 A-grade students, and 1 student who got only a B+ because of some error in the way I taught or advised him, I will worry and agonise over that one “failure”. What did I do wrong? Should I have done something else? What sort of punishment or bad consequences should I expect for this mistake? Will this person hate me for life? I have let them down… I am no longer worthy of trust, I have failed in my responsibilities. All these kinds of thoughts run through my mind.. and even though I’m wise enough to dismiss the majority of them, still… they occur at least once, and even more if someone else expresses them to me. That’s why I always have a strong desire to act and play perfectly. Even in my games, I can re-play the same scenario over and over again past the point of boredom, just to achieve perfection. I once spent 6 hours replaying 10 minutes of game time, over and over again, to find the optimal series of actions to take.

But I’m learning to let go now, following the examples set before me. While yes, students are important, and to some extent I should feel responsible for them, I needn’t beat myself too harshly if I feel like I’ve failed them. It’s a learning point for me, and I should regard myself as an apprentice at the craft of teaching, not as a master. I can make mistakes. I’m expected to make mistakes every now and then. I’m not perfect. I can learn and improve, and maybe not make the same mistakes again. There is forgiveness. There is hope. There is always a new batch of students every semester. I can hone my craft slowly, iteratively, working until I’ve polished my skills and gained more experience.

There’s so much to learn about the craft of teaching, I realised. It really is a skill by itself. And teaching design is almost as fun as doing design. When doing design, you’re trying to make certain explicit principles become embedded and tacit in the designed product. When teaching design, you’re trying to make things that are embedded and tacit in the designed product become explicit and extract design principles which you can share to the students. It’s the same process, just in reverse. That’s what I find so fascinating about it.

Something struck me today.

The process of design is often a very difficult one to grasp for students. It takes numerous examples and constant exposure to practice before they get it. Even for me, I’ve been doing design work for the last 4 years or so, and I’m only barely getting a glimpse into the methodology that goes behind the work. Almost nobody ‘gets’ it and is able to put it into practice after one exposure. It takes repeated exercises, repeated work, before the principles become habit.

And that is really the goal of any design teacher – to practise and train their students until the principles that they are taught manifest themselves in habits of behavior and thought. You don’t pass on knowledge, you pass on a skill… a pattern of doing things. And this must become tacit knowledge – must become ingrained into the student’s soul – before it is of any practical value.

The trouble is… these things take time. They take practice. You can’t teach a skill like piano-playing in a day. Similarly, you can’t teach a design methodology in a day, a week, or even a semester. It’s a very slow process. You have to practice and repeat, practice and repeat… expose them to the same skill and same principle operating in various circumstances, until they get it. But how can you do it in a classroom setting? And how can you successfully measure the outcome, if the learning objective is a process, not a product or a body of knowledge?

It’s a very difficult problem, and I’m not sure I know the answer.

Right now, I can see that the best way to teach a design habit is really through a mentoring / apprenticeship model, the way all other craft skills are taught. You have someone working on something, and a more experienced mentor working alongside, showing them how to do certain things, and evaluating their progress, on a one-to-one basis. You’ll have to structure the lessons in such a way that one aspect of the skill is taught at one time, and constantly reinforced throughout the course by subsequent lessons as well.

Of course, nice as they sound, I am taking it with a pinch of salt… I get the feeling my scores were significantly boosted by two things this last semester – one, the program we used was unexpectedly causing a lot more problems, so students were desperately grateful for any help they received, and two, I had huge amounts of free time to help students with the problems, because I hadn’t yet started my own Master’s studies and research. That’s not going to be the case this coming semester onwards, so I do expect a slight drop in my scores from now on.

Then, of course, we come to the more interesting comments – about how I could improve.

While most of them indicated I was doing great, there were a few things which I thought were important. I got two complaints that sometimes my responses to emails were a bit slow. I think I recall about 4 times during the semester when that occurred. Two of those times, I frankly discount, because they emailed me on a Friday night or Saturday, asking me about something due on Sunday. If I didn’t check my office mail on the weekend (and I usually don’t), then of course I would have missed it. The other two times… yeah, fine. I dropped the ball a little there. Should send acknowledgements when I receive emails, rather than sit silently on it while waiting for an answer before replying. Still learning good email communications practices. It always seems to me to be rather useless to just say “Received, thanks”, when I haven’t got anything more to add, but I guess it reassures the sender that they’ve been heard, at least.

(Then again, I remember one group sending an email to me asking to meet up within a hour or two of the sending of the email. I still managed to scramble to meet them, but just how often do they expect me to check my mail?! I think this generation is becoming too used to Instant Messaging… I remember when I used to be happy if I got a reply within a week of sending an email. I still associate email more with a sped-up version of snail mail than a slowed-down version of MSN Messenger. That’s why I use it to send infrequent but long messages, rather than the one-liner conversations that most people are starting to use it for. But maybe I’m just an old fogey.)

The other repeated complaint (again, two) was that sometimes my words were too kind, and I didn’t point out critical problems with their projects, so the grades they finally got didn’t tally with the comments I made. Hmm… not much I can say about this. I think it’s a tradeoff, generally – if I used harsher critical comments, I would no longer be seen as more friendly and approachable. And for me, at least, the kind approach works better than the strict approach. I realised most of my students aren’t actually interested in continuing on to develop games in the future, so I thought at least getting them interested in games and having a (reasonably) pleasant exposure experience would be good for them, rather than raising the bar to professional standards they require in the industry. Still… I know several times I was plagued with doubts whether it was a good idea to let some groups proceed with a decision which I could foresee a lot of problems with. Most of the time, I let them decide on their own which direction they wanted to proceed in, but gave them feedback on the appropriateness of their course of action (or the benefits and pitfalls of it) after their decision was made. Still not sure if that’s the best idea or not.

I realised something in the course of teaching this semester. There exists such a thing as “design sense”, or “design judgement”. Some people have it – they can unerringly sense which of the myriad choices they face would turn out to be the most entertaining, or aesthetically-pleasing, or make the most sense to their audience. I had a couple of students like that in my classes – they were quite sure of their direction and what they wanted to achieve with their games, and their game ideas were always simple and achievable, but fun. With those kinds of students, it’s a pleasure to just sit back, outline the problems they have to face, and then watch them go at it. Reminds me of me in my younger days, even if I do say so myself. ^^

Some people are blessed with naturally good intuition and design sense – it’s inborn in them. For most others, I think it can be trained through repeated experiences – you gain insight from experience as a substitute for natural instinct. And I think part of my job is to help them gain that insight into design through experience, by letting them make their own choice, grappling with the unknowns and trying to accurately foresee what the pitfalls and benefits that lie ahead of any given option. That’s my policy behind why I prefer to let my students make their choices instead of telling them they should do it this way or that way. And even if they make mistakes, or travel down the wrong direction, I’ll try to hint to them what problems they’re going to face, and see if they can exercise judgement in pulling back or going around the problems.

But what do you do with people who are completely lacking any design sense at all? I had a group like that last sem. I simply didn’t know what to do with them. It was really weird – they had the usual mix of good ideas and bad ideas…  but for some reason, they almost always chose the bad idea over the good one. It’s not that they were lacking in good ideas, mind you – their brainstorming session threw up a couple of gold nuggets, I thought. But whenever I left them to their own devices and to make their own choices, they consciously, deliberately… chose the bad idea. And remained convinced it was a good direction. I mean, I tried to be fair and point out that there could be ways to get around the problems that they were going to face… in retrospect, maybe they took that as encouragement that they were heading down the right path, instead of a desperate attempt to salvage what could be saved. But I might as well admit that my system totally failed when it came to that group, and they were probably justified in voicing a complaint about my teaching. I wonder how other teachers handle this sort of problem? How do you teach the tone-deaf how to sing, or the colour-blind how to paint? Is it possible, or am I always doomed to lose a few students to this problem?

So, since this is Labour Day, I decided to plan all my doings for May, separated into different categories:

Work

1. Attend postmortem meeting for Game Design module. (1/2 day)
2. Tidy up files and come up with a coherent filing system to handle multiple semesters of accumulated teaching work. (1/2 day)
3. Help out with Arts and Social Sciences Open House on 16th May. (1 day)
4. Locate and purchase finger toy for CNM Games Library. (1/2 day)

Total = 2.5 days

Research / Studies

1. Check whether my application for Master’s has gone through. (1/2 day)
2. Read at least 2 journal papers / articles a week about my proposed research topic to find out about the competition. (4-5 days total)
3. Help vet Siti’s thesis if she needs it, and learn how to structure a thesis. (1-2 days)

Total = 7.5 days.

Ministry

1. Finish Study of John leader’s training course. (30 hours total)
2. Plan and implement Study of John in cell group. (20 hours total)
3. Call at least two cell members a week to spend time with them. (8-10 hours total)
4. Organise birthday party for two cell members in May (6 hours)
5. Organise board games party cum outreach event for NUS students. (6 hours)
6. Collect reimbursement for paying for VCF website hosting. (1 hour)
7. Sign up for church camp in June. (1 hour)
8. Read book on Spiritual Gifts in preparation for next season. (10 hours)

Total = 84 hours = 7 days (assuming 12 hours a day)

Relationships

1. Attend PGP CF reunion on 2nd May (6 hours)
2. Send birthday card to Val. (3 hours)
3. Send email to Wai Pick. (3 hours)
4. Pick out presents for Mother’s Day. (1 day)
5. Wish the rest of the May babies a happy birthday. (1 hour total)

Total = 2 days.

Hobbies / Projects

1. Add Portfolio, past projects and Fanfiction.net link to this website. (6 hours)
2. Blog regularly at least 3 times a week. (24 hours total, at least)
3. Find artist and finish Wedding Vows project. (5 days)
4. Finish writing Planetstorm fanfiction. (1-2 days)
5. Decide and reply to monele whether to continue with Royal Explorer project or not. (1/2 day)

Total = 10 days

Leisure

1. Finish David Drake’s book “In the Stormy Red Sky” (5 hours total)
2. Finish “The Case for the Real Jesus” by Lee Strobel. (5 hours total)
3. Finish at least one round of Sid Meier’s Pirates! game. (10 hours)
4. Catch up to latest Family Outing episode. (2 days)
5. Finish playing Fallout game. (20 hours)
6. Finish playing Baldur’s Gate game. (20 hours)
7. Watch Cross Game, Hanasekeru Seishounen, Eden of the East and Ristoranto Paradiso anime. (8 – 10 hours total)
8. Stay current with various manga series. (12 hours total)
9. Read Naval Chronicles of Alan Lewrie series of books. (40 hours total)

Total = 12 days

Summary Breakdown

• Work = 2.5 days
• Research = 7.5 days
• Ministry = 7 days
• Relationships = 2 days
• Projects = 10 days
• Leisure = 12 days
• TOTAL = 41 days (12 hours per day, excluding sleep, meals and daily necessities)
• TOTAL without any leisure time = 29 days.

Hmmm… that’s enough. I think I can do most of these in May, though I’ll probably not be able to complete everything on my leisure list. Actually, chances are I’ll get distracted by something not on this list and waste time here and there. But here’s hoping I should be able to complete at least 90% of the stuff here, which would then clear the boards in time for an equally-heavy list in June.

… Am I doing too much again?

I need to step back, take a deep breath, and relax.

And I realise that it’s not my job to solve all my students’ problems for them. Nor is it my job to ensure that they get a pleasant and interesting experience out of this course, and leave with good feelings and much accomplishment. My job is to Assist the Teacher, as a Teaching Assistant. It may be my desire to help out as much as I can, but it’s my duty to let them go through this period and learn for themselves, experience the stress for themselves, and make their own decisions on how much time, effort and motivation they are willing to dedicate to this project. By stepping in to help all the time, I not only lose my own sense of objectivity, but also may be making my students less-equipped to handle the real world stresses and taking away their free will.

Ultimately, my job is not to make sure that every student succeeds, nor is it to make sure every students learns something. My job is to teach certain lessons. Learning and succeeding must come from a conscious choice by the students themselves, or else it has no value. I’m not very good at showing “tough love”, but I think that’s something I must learn to do next semester, or I’ll get emotionally-swamped under again like I did this semester. But I think I should be open and honest about it – I will announce to the students beforehand so that they know this is what to expect from me, rather than just acting that way and letting students think that I’m just mean by nature.

But yet, looking at them, at the amount of work and stress they go through, and based upon my own memories of projects I did when I was a student, I can’t help but feel sorry for them. What a sad world we live in, that we must stress and burden ourselves so much in order to succeed. I wish our academic system isn’t so achievement-focused. And yet, this is what the industry and business world demands. It’s the product of the capitalistic society, where the Darwinian law rules in the free market economies of talent and money. In a sense, our students right now are still ‘sheltered’ in academia, because they haven’t been exposed to the full harshness of the working world’s struggle to survive. And so, I have no choice but to prepare them for the system.

Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’:
“Cursed is the ground for your sake;
In toil you shall eat of it
All the days of your life.
Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,
And you shall eat the herb of the field.
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread
Till you return to the ground,
For out of it you were taken;
For dust you are,
And to dust you shall return.”
- Genesis 3:17-19, The Bible (NKJV) -

Never has the curse of struggle and conflict in work laid upon mankind due to Adam’s sin been more apparent to me until now. The “survival of the fittest” rules which cause so much grief to so many in the world today came about as a direct result of sin’s curse. Oh, how I wish I could turn socialist or communist. But they don’t work as governance systems unless a Perfect Being is ruling at the top, and people who don’t exhibit “human nature” (i.e. self-centredness) are helping to govern. Have to wait until Jesus’ return and the Millennium Reign before we can see a perfect socialist/communist state that lives up to their ideals. Until then, I have no choice but to live in a capitalistic world and propagate the system in the classroom to the young people I’m teaching.

I think I’ve realised something about myself, though. I’m easily addicted to problem-solving. As long as I am reasonably familiar with the parameters of the problem, I can spend endless hours trying a bunch of ways to get the job done. This explains why I can get sucked in so easily into things like programming, philosophy, and gaming (especially the latter). After all, a game is usually nothing more than a bunch of problems dressed up in an attractive package. And game design is even better – it involves solving problems about how to construct interesting problems for other people to solve.

The last two weeks at work have been a classic example of this, and surprisingly quite fun. My students are making their computer game prototypes now, and calling on me for help whenever they get stuck. Sometimes I can’t help them, but most of the time I can at least suggest some avenues of approach to the problem. And sometimes I can solve it outright, then and there. I guess all that experience working with programmers on several games does pay off, even though I still don’t do much programming. I can think like a programmer, which is half the battle in itself. But how do I teach Arts students who have a phobia regarding programming that it’s not really about math as much as it is about logic (which is also used in law and philosophy), and sheer perseverance through trial-and-error? I’ve come to realise that craft of teaching involves the destruction of mental blocks and attitudes that hamper the students as much as it is about forming good habits of thought and imparting skills.

In any case, it looks like I’ve acquired a new past-time… trying to make simple games in Blender by myself, just for the sheer fun of it. It’s also useful to prove to my students that it IS possible in the time frame given (if I can create a game by myself in 6 weeks, surely they can create a similar game with 5 people in the same amount of time…). And it’s always nice to practise a rusty skill. I’m kinda sick and tired of people assuming that I don’t know how to program and looking down on me for that, when actually it’s just that I don’t mention my programming skills because I know they’re not up to par with other first-class programmers I know, and I prefer to specialise in design and writing anyway.

Anime / Manga: Ako kissed Negi! Huh, can’t believe Akamatsu actually allowed it to happen. Naruto finally met his father! Cool. Also, Mitsuru Adachi’s Cross Game has returned to publication! Time for more youthful sports romance drama! Yay!

Books: Just finished reading Steven Brust’s “The Phoenix Guards”, a fantasy adventure novel written in the French Romantic style. Great technique, there. Lots of humour too. Haven’t encountered French Romance since reading The D’Artagnan Chronicles by Alexander Dumas back in secondary school. The Phoenix Guards really remind me of The Three Musketeers (as it was supposed to, I guess…)

Christianity: Did you know that the last parts of the Gospel of Mark are widely considered by Biblical scholars as not to have been written by the author of Mark’s Gospel? The oldest manuscripts end off at v. 8, which means the passage about the Great Commission, the post-Resurrection appearances and the accompanying of signs and wonders to the message being preached by the disciples were not included in the original Gospel. Some scholars theorise that this passage was added as a footnote by a scribe in the second century, based off the Acts of the Apostles. Lee Strobel’s “The Case for the Real Jesus” is very interesting.

Games: Just added Saboteur and Munchkin to my personal board game collection! Now if only I can interest enough people in getting together to play them… Also, next week is the Game Developer’s Conference, where the Independent Games Festival competition results will be announced. Hope CarneyVale: Showtime wins the Grand Prize.

Shows: You know, no matter how many times I watch them, I just find it really hard to believe Taeyeon and Hyungdon acting like a couple in We Got Married. Maybe I’m biased because I see SNSD a lot elsewhere, or maybe their behaviour on screen or the editing process really is trying to keep things light rather than developing, because they’re scared of all the anti-fans. But there’s absolutely no chemistry between this couple. It feels more like a big brother being run roughshod over by his little sister and her pack of friends. That one Kangin-Taeyeon moment in episode 47 had more sizzle and spice than the entire Taeyeon-Hyungdon relationship so far. *sigh* I miss the original couples of We Got Married. Especially Alex and Shin Ae.

Misc.: I really should start building this website up more and put up my portfolio as well as my fanfiction pieces… been kind of lazy to do it.

I have no words to describe how zombified I feel, so I shall just post this comic:

Actually, it’s a combination of 2 factors. I was doing quite well until I fell sick, the day before a weekend. Then, a combination caused by reduced willpower (due to illness) and tremendous amounts of free time (due to the weekend, followed by two days of no classes and completely up-to-date marking) brought me crashing down. And it’s a vicious cycle – the sicker I was, the weaker my mental health was. The weaker my mental health, the more time I spend gaming. The more time I spend gaming, the weaker my physical health is. The weaker my physical health, the slower I am to recover from sickness. I finally pulled out of the cycle roughly yesterday.

Now I need to play catch-up and get the ball rolling again. My new motto is: “Success is defined not by how many times you’ve fallen down, but how many times you’ve gotten back up.” On the plus side, playing those particular three games in succession has spawned a whole cascade of ideas with regards to various issues and topics, which I’ll post about in upcoming entries. And furthermore, I found out today that some of my students read this blog as well. A shout-out to them!

On another note, I’ve also inherited responsibility for organising and running the CNM Games Library… basically a collection of video games and gaming machines that my predecessor have been collecting. Spent most of today labelling game cases. Will probably spend most of tomorrow doing the same as well. Tedious work. But I guess it’ll be interesting to be able to slowly build up a collection of classic and notable games for students to play. If I can get any students interested in it. The trouble is, some of the games which I consider very important for all students of game design to play are not necessarily the games which students will find fun. I have to balance between getting “good” games and “popular” games. I wonder how real librarians who work with books handle this sort of situation?