Gabriel Kho Wei Jun

A0216225N

Tutorial E47

papier final

I am from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), majoring in Social Work

(SW). A big part of my course looks at three key components: the heart, the head, and the

hands. All three work in unison to see what can be done for a client, whether it is showing

empathy towards someone facing a struggle, being able to adapt between different theoretical

positions to engage a person’s strengths or problems, or know-how of what can be done

practically within one’s means to serve someone else’s best interests. For this paper, I thought

of a takeaway I believe I have learnt that applies something similar to an approach I learnt in

SW, and I will try my best to explain that here.

Because I felt quite preoccupied this semester with many 2K level modules, I found

myself holding off taking GEQ seriously at the start, instead giving it the bare minimum

attention I thought it required. Because of this, I would say that the bulk of my learning came

from tutorial lessons. To be frank, I am quite thankful for these lessons, as they provided

relief from all of the content I was learning over the semester (SW 2K level modules are very

content-heavy), while at the same time helping me to stimulate my sleepy brain. They also

gave me the chance to hang out with my friends Kevin and Brian, especially in an engaging

environment where we could really have fun with learning. Through learning the different

segments and the reflecting on what I have learnt from them, I think the most valuable

takeaway is how these different ways of thinking all exist in the same world, and are not

always seen to work in silos, but rather, are all interconnected in one way or another.

Whether it is the tweaking of scenarios to find the best or most efficient solution, the testing
out hypotheses and making mistakes before learning from them, determining if said scenario

or hypothesis is even worth or moral to tweak with, or even just realising that so much we do

is pretty much to benefit ourselves (no I kid the world is alright-ish), these all find themselves

at the root of what it means to humanity and our moving forward, in intellectual, social, even

emotional terms. With these, we can better begin to understand our fellow humans and all the

problems they face, which is an understanding I personally hope everyone can adopt too, to

see how we can look out for and help each other in our society. To understand that perhaps

every action we take has a consequence towards someone we might not even be aware of,

and move mankind forward not just in the direction of knowledge, but of love, kindness and

compassion as well. I quote my man President John F. Kennedy (though it was really

Jacqueline Kennedy), who said (or believed), “One person can make a difference and

everyone should try.”

I believe that this module has also given me a new lens to be more careful in the way I

think, because I realise that there is just so much that I am ignorant of. I used to dismiss

computing and coding and everything else in that field, believing that it was absolutely

unnecessary for me, a SW student, but I failed to realise its presence in my life all this while,

(also what it really is). Back in Secondary school, I thought it would be cool to write stuff in

binary code because it would not make sense to someone at first glance unless they knew

binary code themselves. Once again, having this knowledge alone was something that I

possessed, yet it was something I could not realise was happening during our computing

lesson. I could attribute this to years of not having done the stuff, but more importantly, it

helped me see how much of the information in my mind worked in silos—and that it helped

to have interconnectedness between bits of information in the brain. These bring me back to

the concept of an eclectic theoretical orientation that I learnt in SW (Santrock, 2016), which

posits that we take the best from different theories and apply them together to a situation in
order to make it work best. I propose that beyond just different theories are different mindsets

we can adopt in our everyday lives, to live to our fullest potential for ourselves and for others.

Thanks Melissa.

Word count: 745

References

Santrock, J. (2018b). Theories of Development. In Life-Span Development (17th ed., pp. 20–

28). McGraw-Hill Education.