Student Blog: A Safe Rehearsal Space to Land

At the first glance of this month’s topic, which is Academic Integrity, I thought I knew exactly what it was but after a quick search, it turned out to be more than just maintaining your grades which was what I initially thought it was. From what I’ve read, it is the academic policy of honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility.

In musical theatre, all these build the foundation of the craft so it’s been incredibly important to maintain them the best that I can. To maintain academic integrity, for me, it ultimately falls under communication, whether it’s with my classmates or my lecturers. I am quite lucky that my course relies on the cooperation of others which has helped me quite immensely with maintaining my integrity. If I cannot do things on my own, it’s easy enough to reach out to someone with that ground of trust and honesty. And where you’ve given respect, you will always get it in return which has been a part of my practice since forever.

Responsibility is an entirely different ballgame itself, but I have my parents to thank for ensuring that I stay on my path of being the diligent student they wanted me to be. Though, I will always do my best for them! Here, I bring back my endless rambling about my planners and journals because they have been assisting me through the massive workloads on my hands. Organizing them and having them all down on paper to work through does such wonders for me. It helps me balance the responsibilities I have between my student and personal life as well seeing as they do not correlate as much. But I feel like responsibility spans out so much more than just what’s in front of me as a student or a person living on my own.

Putting this into practice in my course, I make sure to be careful of those I surround myself with to create a healthy rehearsal space as well as return the same sense of safety to my castmates. Academic integrity really goes down to the smallest things in my course. There’s the giving of solicited feedback and learning to take it. From that alone, you have the transaction of trust, respect and honesty. Then there is something as simple as bringing sheet music for your song as requested by your teacher from yesterday’s class, which brings in responsibility. It’s all the little things that really put the whole picture together as much as there is to consider in academic integrity.

I do my best to maintain each principle without one of them falling behind since all of them seem to correlate with each other. There cannot be one without the other, like honesty, trust and respect. It is also important to me to display these qualities if I want them in return as well from others. It doesn’t matter much to me if people are unwilling to return the favor because I believe that my own development is more important rather than bringing myself down to their level.

I find it quite difficult putting it into words to explain how I maintain academic integrity as the discipline has been in my system for the longest time. Malaysian schools have trained me from a young age to abide by the principles of academic integrity in order to get by my schooling years as well as my life outside studies. I have never quite considered those principles to solely be a part of academics, and so I cannot really pinpoint to you how I practice each one of them within academics only. It’s almost like second nature to me at this point. I don’t have to put much thought into it, I just do, and it comes as it is. I really am grateful for my parents and teachers I’ve had in the past who pushed me and taught me these lessons.

But I do have my days when I overthink a little too much.

Despite my messy attempt to explain academic integrity, I know that it is one of the most important values I should carry with me throughout life. I was taught that if I’m already practicing the basics in my school days, carrying them into my work life will only make things a lot simpler for me to get by.

It’s all quite true.

I wouldn’t be halfway across the world from home if I hadn’t been practicing since elementary/primary school. I wouldn’t be here in my second year either if I’d slacked off just a little. In my past few vlogs, those pictures of the sky is a reminder of my journey through first year, of the privilege I had to be under Winchester’s sky, doing what I love. And the sky in this one is from my new home for second year.

I could build my trust and respect in others in my course and create a place where we could be honest with each other. Like I’ve said before, with my course being reliant on the cooperation factor, having people I could around who made me a better student and performer, it’s one of the rewards of abiding by academic integrity.

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