USA for Students event

I would like to promote an event that I helped volunteered last year. The event is called "USA for Students". Please check the website here: http://www.usaforstudents.org/

When we first started (which I was also part of the organizing Committee), it was called "Experiences 2006 Kuala Lumpur". Last year, we decided to change the name to "Discover U.S Education -'07". I was partly responsible for the name "Discover". The reason is because, I strongly believe in the discovery process of oneself, especially during college times.

We sometimes don't know what to do in our lives. I mean, I was there, so I know how it feels.
It's fine if parents wants to give directions on certain way their kids are supposed to do in college. For example, they want to give their kids education to prepare them for a promising carrier.

However, if the students wants to take this advice as it is (which they sometimes do) they need to think again. There are so much thing to experience in college that some people don't have the opportunity to experience. If we're starting to think about jobs before we're even entering college, we most likely don't like our studies life, and blame ourselves if we have bad hair days during work (that if you found the job that you're looking for. What if you're not?).

If you're about to enter college, please give yourself a chance. Work is a different story. You can work as whatever you like, but study is different. We should discover ourselves. Put yourself in a position that you want to do something cool in your life. Give it a try (take course, do part time, whatever) during college. For example, I used to think that I want to make a movie, so I went to take Cinema class (I'm majoring in computer science. As usual, you don't always get to do what you want in your life, so College is the time).

How about "Education"
I'm also a strong believer in "education". What's a big deal about this? Here's the big deal:
Society sometimes mistakenly believe that "Education" equals to "Learning". This is wrong. In Malays, education is called "Pendidikan" whereas learning is"Pelajaran". So "Education" is "Pendidikan" and "Learning" is "Pelajaran". Remember that.

So if you "educate", you're basically "mould" someone into something that is supposed to be (or what the society or world perceive to be) for their entire life. Why I say "entire life"? Because you're exposing something, "educate", during their formative years. As you probably suspect, formative years are very important.

So to have someone to "learn", you need to "teach", and if you teach, you can just teach a specific thing like, teaching algebra, or why we need to know Maxwell equations.

But to educate, you go even further: At the end of the day, how do you care about using these Maxwell equations? How could it be use? How can we use it in a right way? Is it good for society? How can we manipulate these stuff into something better in the future? To educate, we form a thinking body. Thinking even further. For the future, for life, for the good of society, and humanity and take actions on it.

That's education. Education is something very special. It is not mere learning.

OK, so I care about discovery and education. Big deal?

The event that I helped organized was designed to have a face-to-face interaction with the people that have been studying in the U.S and familiar with U.S Education. I'm not saying that U.S Education is the best education system in the world. What I would like, we, Malaysians to do, is to take advantage of the U.S. Education ecosystem here in Malaysia and learn where we could see fit in our society, and we should also be learning and benefiting from the U.S. Education. I won't go into much detail how I get educated in the U.S. and so on (different people has different opinions, so my opinion is that, it is a great learning experience. Maybe I will post in a separate blog post later).

For those of you who are studying in the U.S and have studied in the U.S and would like to represent your school, please register at
http://www.usaforstudents.org/registration/registerExhibitor.php
and please contact your respective university to get the brochures and some school logo or something to cheer up the event (if you have been to Discover last year, you knew what I mean).
Anyway, I see you in KL!