Sunday, November 16, 2014

Part 1 - Dream high to York ~Pascasiswazah MARA~

Assalamuaikum..

As I told u before, i really would like to share how I ended up in York for this year. It was begun  with Pascasiswazah MARA 2014. I have never planned to further my MA as soon as this. By having a son and my husband is in the middle of studying his MA, I could never imagined to get this chance. But... yeah.. Allah is the great planner. It started with a friend who asked me to apply for this education loan by MARA. MARA offered a sponsorship for postgraduates who want to study abroad. It was opened in early Feb-end of Feb 2014. I asked my husband about it and he just said, why not your try. If it's ours, then it will be ours. InsyaAllah... then, I just tried and submit my application at the very last date of the closing date for application. Since I was not planning it, I had not decided what course I wanted to study or which university. Once again, my friend suggested to apply University of York. I was planning to choose either Sociolinguistics or Applied Linguistics. So, I made a little bit research and comparison between these two. Firstly, I wanted to apply for both but I will face difficulty with referees. Each course needs 2 academic referees, so, I have to contact my former lecturers for that. Since lecturers are of course busy, it would be difficult for them to prepare a few reference letters for me. Ya.. I can contact a few lecturers to do that for me but I have left university for about 4 years and as a result I could not find some lecturers' email in the university contact. Finally, I managed to contact 2 lecturers who were willing to lend me their hand. However, it was not an easy process, we really need to push our referees a little bit in a polite way.. hihi. As I mentioned, they are busy and sometimes they will forget to do that for us. So, be prepared for the worst and always think positive. There's no easy way to success.
Owh... I should tell about university application in the next entry. I should just focused about pascasiswazah MARA. Okeh... back to my sponsorship application; after two months (if i was not mistaken) MARA released a result for Psychometric Test. It was the first time where MARA conducted it online. It had about 100 questions (I am not sure) with multiple choice questions within 1 hour. The questions were very tricky and vary. What we should prepare? I think just nothing, you should think logically for each question. Perhaps, u can practice any Psychometric Test in the internet.
After the test, the candidates will have to attend an interview session. It was a group interview session of 10 candidates. The interview session was divided into 3 parts. First part: problem solution where we have been given a problem to solve and discuss in our group. Second part: creative and critical thinking; we have to build a bridge that can sustain the burden of a bottle of mineral water by newspaper and explain. Third part: individual part where we have to share our future research topic and research questions. 
Honestly, I felt terrible about this interview. Other candidates were so good and I didn't think I managed to do it well. I just felt ok, redha or let it go. Just went back to school and didn't look back.
Once again.. Alhamdullillah.. Allah is a great planner. I got it!!! Thanks to my husband, my son and my dearest family for their endless prayer. May Allah bless all of us.. (^_^)

Till see u again in the next entry. InsyaAllah.

Cheers,
ticer wawa

Friday, November 7, 2014

Bismillah...

Assalamualaikum...

It has been a long time since I left his blog. Being a teacher, a mother & a wife really make my life super duper busy. Waa.. is that so??? =)This should be my personal diary, I supposed. Not sure. Maybe I'm not into writing so much.  

So, what I really want to share? It's almost about 1 year plus I have left this blog. Of course so many that are things going on in my life. But today, I want to warm up my interest (really?) or my blog writing, so that, I will share everything or anything in this blog. Ultimately, I really want to share about my unexpected journey to York, UK. My new life that I have never been dreaming before. Yes.. Allah is the best planner. Perhaps, in the next entry I will share about it from the beginning. I'm trying to help others to find out more about this journey of being postgraduate in York. Hope it will benefit others.. InsyaAllah. May Allah grant me strength to keep writing.

Sneak peek about next entry... ;)





http://maragov.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/unnamed.jpg

Love,
ticer wawa