Summer

 

Best summer of my life. 

Understanding

It's what my Statistics lecturer stresses we do. Not just when it comes to Statistics, but in everything we do for that is what we are here to learn in university.

High school was a good time. Picking colleges was a terrible time.

But I remember I wanted a small beautiful college in which I wasn't just a number, but was remembered by teachers and was nurtured to develop myself and my abilities. Then I got distracted by a whole ton of other things like rankings, my financial ability (okay this is pretty legit I suppose) and how successful I would be in finding a job after that. I wanted to be a doctor and I wanted to be a lawyer. Heck I wanted to be both. Searching through website after website of colleges, I made my own drafts and powerpoint presentations of the schools that offered what I wanted. They'd give me the chance to try out everything I wanted to try, they were absolutely beautiful, had great university spirit and they were small. Promising that the student teacher ratio was absolutely low, they guaranteed I wouldn't be just any other student - I would be someone. 

Having read an article about a guy who didn't do quite so well for his As and applied to NUS 4 times to get into the course of his dreams, I'm remembering what I wanted initially. No doubt he's incredibly talented and smart to have graduated top of his cohort after he gave up on that dream and applied to UNSW and then moved on to Oxford and Princeton. But I'm not too dumb too I suppose. 

My favourite subject while I did the IB in high school was History HL. It was absolute hell. My readings stacked up like there was no tomorrow and all I ever read was American history. But I learnt an incredible amount from it. Sources, criticizing, questioning, synthesizing my thoughts and developing the passion to ask questions to find out more. It may seem like a useless course because I'm not majoring in it now nor planning to be a historian any time in the future. In fact I didn't do quite so well for it in my finals but it remains to be my favourite because I worked my butt off for it, learnt, understood, analyzed and wanted to learn more. 

It's unlike Statistics (despite however enthusiastic my lecturers and tutors are) or most of the modules in my Business course where flipping through the textbooks and trying to understand the central limit theorem and Bayes Theorem not only puts me to sleep but is completely foreign to me. 

Much as I'd like to pursue what I love, to understand instead of memorizing, to make full use of the $9000 a year my parents are paying for my education, in Singapore's society, grades are everything. A C is not acceptable. An A- is only okay because you're not getting an A. A B isn't even average anymore. We're striving to improve our grades, pushing ourselves to get a GPA of 5 in the hopes of getting first class honours, to go on exchange and hopefully get a job at the Big 4 and earn trillions.

Learning and understanding is negligible.

Furthermore, going on exchange depends on one's GPA. Purely based on grades and anyones financial ability, no interviews are conducted to see if they really are interested to leave to learn, or if they're there just to clear more modules to lighten their load for the next semester. More often than not, we send over people who remain in their room in a country in Europe studying, studying and studying. 

Of course I'd like to have an impressive GPA, make the Dean's list and obtain a job that thousands of other business kids would love to have.

But I'm remembering again, that my goal is to be different, to learn and understand, be able to apply what I know and be more than just book-smart. I'd like to go see the world. To explore and be adventurous (no matter how cowardly I may get sometimes). To meet new people, stop being lazy and get out of my room to participate in more activities, quit procrastinating on statistics and embrace it, ask more questions. And finally, I'd like to make a change in the world. 

Chingay 2013

It's a Chinese New Year festival known to Singaporeans and a few Malaysians to mark the end of the 15th days of celebration.

While I've never watched Chingay live before neither have I had the interest to watch it on the telly. Nickelodeon or the Internet always won. Anyhoo it was a ton of fun watching it 'cos the end was terrific with the mini foam party. If I had a choice I would never have wanted the foam to stop. The fireworks though, have become a norm after living in China. Kinda almost as normal as seeing a cloud.

But hooray one item off the "Must-do-as-a-Singaporean" list!