Reflective journal on Awesome Microbe Carnival

Before AMC

I find a little bit confusing about the job scope of secretary, where most of the time Ee lyn was doing all the work and she didn't ask much help from me. Therefore me and Jossy felt guilty of not helping much all the time. To be honest I didn't join the preparation of AMC too much as other committee did and I felt really sorry. However, I think that trello is a good platform for us to update our progress as the other committee can access to it anytime.

During AMC
 
Me and Ee Lyn in charged of registration counter most of the time. If we realised there were some big groups of students entered, we will either ask some seniors to look after the registration counter or we take turn to go in so that we can explain our poster to them. This is because Alia and Azny were in charged of games booth, so there were only both Aisyah and Atikah to explain our poster to visitor.

On the second day, we realised our booklet is almost out of stock. Therefore we decided to keep few copies of booklets for the university that is confirm coming rather than giving it to the visitors. There was one malay visitor asked whether there is extra booklet from me as she really seems like she wanted to get more information about this carnival. However due to lacking of booklet I really felt sorry to reject her.

So far there was not much problems regarding the registration booth. But overall, I realised the most common and significant problem is that our committees did not approach visitors to explain to them more on microorganisms. Some of us just stand in front of the poster and wait for the visitor to come nearer to the poster. I can still remember there were two girls asking me question regarding disk diffusion method. Based on what I had carried out in experiment before, I told her that this method is about placing a small rounded filter paper soaked with antibiotics on the agar plate cultured with bacteria to be tested. After that we grow the bacteria and observe whether there is presence of 'zone of inhibition'. In my explanation, zone of inhibition is a transparent ring around the disk. As the growth of bacteria is indicated by cloudiness or colonies on agar plate, if the bacteria is susceptible to particular antibiotics then the area around the disk will be no bacteria growing. As a result the area around the disk appear clear.

In a conclusion, I think we need to take more initiative to introduce to the visitor more on our own field of studies. Moreover, we should have studied more latest article or updates regarding microbiology so that we could answer when they asked us questions. Also, we can tell them what is the importance or impact of microorganisms towards medical, manufacturing and food industry by relating microbes to the current issues.