Not quite Daniel Powter but if you had a bad day.....
Sometimes the pressure just mounts and it is really difficult to see beyond the completion of the next assignment.
Back when I was in school, assessment guides were not even that hot yet and definitely the exam papers of the various schools were not available for sale. I was sailing through Literature classes because I loved to lock myself up with some cookies and my Literature text. I also found it very liberating to be able to tell my Mum that I needed to get to the British Council to listen to tapes and recordings and to get down to research. But I forgot one thing - I began to see the world overmuch in one way - I had over-developed divergent dendrites, that is, I was very good at cross-referencing and connecting and thinking laterally but when it came to expression in Geography and Economics, try as I might. I found it a challenge to clock in the marks for the convergent-thinking subjects.
So the dark day came as I completed my JC at HWA CHONG and found that while getting a place in NUS and a PSC scholarship was a done deal and I had even aced a paper in the English Literature entrance exams for Cambridge University, I was in terms of A levels grades, some notches shy of the stringent PSC requirements for Overseas Scholarships, never mind if there were only a handful of people from Singapore who were ever offered a place by Clare College of Cambridge University. I walked out of City Hall after the PSC interview, broken. The sky outside was bright but I remember looking up and thinking that "this is punishing". To this day, as my family will tell you, I dislike the glare and would rather draw the curtains anytime.
So, like the time I entered Hwa Chong two years before just so I could enjoy the PROMSHO tutors (Promsho stood for Pre-Univ cum Overseas Scholarship for Humanties at Oxbridge), I was going to enter an institution that was not my first choice. The lion dance that greeted me at Hwa Chong troubled the TKGS girl in me for days.
Going to NUS turned out to be life-changing. I met my husband in NUS. But I will say this, I think the most challenging years of your life as a student will not be your undergraduate years. I used to tell my students very confidently that it is the JC years, given how little time you have to both learn, review and revise before the A levels. I think it still is. So gather your momentum now when you are still in scondary school and remember to devote adequate attention to different subjects. Make yourself superbly bilingual, and be a hyphenate - like a mathematician-poet like one of my brave ex-students, or an artist-physicist, or writer-designer.
Don't favour some dendrites over others - give all of you a fair chance!
Back when I was in school, assessment guides were not even that hot yet and definitely the exam papers of the various schools were not available for sale. I was sailing through Literature classes because I loved to lock myself up with some cookies and my Literature text. I also found it very liberating to be able to tell my Mum that I needed to get to the British Council to listen to tapes and recordings and to get down to research. But I forgot one thing - I began to see the world overmuch in one way - I had over-developed divergent dendrites, that is, I was very good at cross-referencing and connecting and thinking laterally but when it came to expression in Geography and Economics, try as I might. I found it a challenge to clock in the marks for the convergent-thinking subjects.
So the dark day came as I completed my JC at HWA CHONG and found that while getting a place in NUS and a PSC scholarship was a done deal and I had even aced a paper in the English Literature entrance exams for Cambridge University, I was in terms of A levels grades, some notches shy of the stringent PSC requirements for Overseas Scholarships, never mind if there were only a handful of people from Singapore who were ever offered a place by Clare College of Cambridge University. I walked out of City Hall after the PSC interview, broken. The sky outside was bright but I remember looking up and thinking that "this is punishing". To this day, as my family will tell you, I dislike the glare and would rather draw the curtains anytime.
So, like the time I entered Hwa Chong two years before just so I could enjoy the PROMSHO tutors (Promsho stood for Pre-Univ cum Overseas Scholarship for Humanties at Oxbridge), I was going to enter an institution that was not my first choice. The lion dance that greeted me at Hwa Chong troubled the TKGS girl in me for days.
Going to NUS turned out to be life-changing. I met my husband in NUS. But I will say this, I think the most challenging years of your life as a student will not be your undergraduate years. I used to tell my students very confidently that it is the JC years, given how little time you have to both learn, review and revise before the A levels. I think it still is. So gather your momentum now when you are still in scondary school and remember to devote adequate attention to different subjects. Make yourself superbly bilingual, and be a hyphenate - like a mathematician-poet like one of my brave ex-students, or an artist-physicist, or writer-designer.
Don't favour some dendrites over others - give all of you a fair chance!
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