Benny wins hearts by infusing love for medicine

By: Yana Ibrahim

Benny Affendi, 38-year-old was born in 21st June 1970 who originated from Jakarta, Indonesia and has spent 12 years in Malaysia, a country he feels most at home.

He first came here as a student of University Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang at 2001 and was recruited by hospitals even before he graduated in Master of Clinical Pharmacy.

Benny Affendi - more than just a pharmacist. 

Benny started his teaching career since 2003 at University College Sedaya International (UCSI) for two years then continued his passion in pharmaceutical field at International Medical University (IMU) for six years and later spend his past two years in here, SEGI University until now.

After being voted as the most favorable lecturer of Faculty of Pharmacy, he is proud to know that his dedication of hard work by staying up late almost every night just to get his best teaching materials readily and his love towards all his students has been appreciated by them.

“His skills for teaching is admirable and classes are never boring as it is filled with information,” said Chong Sung Yan,24 a final year student.

“Mr Benny is unique compared to other lecturers because of his passion in pharmacy”, claimed Thinesh, 22.

Shalini,19 voted for him too and said, “ he deserved this appreciation, even though he is strict, he cares a lot about us”.

SEGI University with its complete and updated facilities has been his best choice to hit his aim as a pharmacy lecturer, which is to ensure that all graduated pharmacy students will be capable to uplift the profession to receive recognition and to be as important as doctors and nurses.

According to him, before he joined in academic line, he used to served as a pharmacist in various hospitals and his experience of collaborating with the hospitals to trained and teach the doctors and nurses about the skills and knowledge of medications there as well as he is also being emotionally touched by the patients, has a great influence on him to become a lecturer.

When he was just a little boy, his parents used to believe in traditional method and herbs to cure illness; with the bad taste and horrible smell of the herbs, he determined to make pills and capsule to make it more convenient in helping others thus decided to be a pharmacist when he grew up.

Our pharmacy faculty here is using the exactly same syllabus from University of Sunderland, United Kingdom and having SEGI pharmacy students as the best student among both university, had made his sweet memories cherish each day as a pharmacy lecturer here.

His motto - I'll teach you how to catch a fish, instead of giving you one.

“One of the worst moment I have ever experienced was in one class which I just don’t know why but I could not control my anger and burst my irritation towards them when I caught one of my students cheat in attendance list by asking my class representative to sign the attendance for him.

“Unfortunately for him, I recognize him as he is one of my tallest students.

“It was a nightmare for them, I suppose,” he laughed.

“I was not angry about the fact that he misses classes although I treat to my students as adults and expect them to catch up on classes but the fact that he was a class representative and his assumption that this was a normalcy which triggered my anger.”

When asked if he were not lecturing today, what would he rather do, Benny explained that if he was not a pharmacy lecturer today, he would be a pilot.

He claimed to be one of his ambitions and hobby is to collect all sorts of plane miniatures.

The pharmaceutical field has been the love of his life because he strongly believes that we should do things that we are good at to be an excellent being.

Contradicted with normal philosophy of education where the teachers will spoon feed everything to the students, his most effective method is to teach these students on how to catch the fish instead of keep on giving them for the fish they need.

Currently he is pursuing his PhD of medical education in University Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) keeping up his hope and efforts to success along his path.