Officially into my 5th week in school... When you attend school on a 3-day basis, times flies!
I am qualified enough to file for graduation this semester. However, I am hesitant about it. I have my own considerations, pressure from people "UP THERE" to constantly revise my choices.
I have no intention to whine but I need to voice my opinions on the tertiary education system:
Why do we have to be put on a bell curve?
Why can't we just live our life according to our own pace, expectations and beliefs?
Why did anyone choose to invent the term "relative"?
Why wouldn't people leave you alone and gave you the little bit of space that everyone need in their lives?
Having gone through 3 semesters in NUS, I thought I had already adapted to that "survival of the fittest" ideology. However, that short stint in Stockholm diminished my understanding of that concept somehow. Everyday when I go to school, for lectures and tutorials, the same questions and topics surround me:
"Are you doing honors?"
"Why aren't you doing it?"
"What's your CAP?"
"I bet your CAP is there."
"Do you know the answers to this tutorial?"
"Can you lend me your lecture notes?"
"Have you done your readings?"
"I am sure you can get a good grade."
"What modules are you doing?"
Why can't we talk about something else? If we weren't evaluated on a relative basis, people will not make comparisons. People will not see you as their rival. You can then build friendships that are to last through life.
Everytime when I reflect on my life in NUS, I feel pathetic. My close friends are people who are of a different major or faculty as me. There are pros-and-cons with regards to that. We do not have a conflict of interest and thus whenever we meet up, we talk about our lives, rather than just about grades and school. However, at the same time, because we are from a different major and faculty, we do not hang out that often. Eventually, I can sense our friendship eroding with the passage of time.
Of course, I have different groups of friends especially my Econs friends who have shown tremendous support, especially Pauline. We have known each other since year 1 in a Mathematics module and every semester, we take at least 3 modules together. However, physicial proximity is the biggest barrier to our friendship. Both of us stay in extreme ends of the island, me in the West and her in the Northeast, thus after classes, both of us simply split ways.
Now as I am reflecting, I realise I've simply closed myself up in school. I hang around with the same group of friends all the time and I no longer see the need to expand my social circle. But what had led to this circumstance? THE PEOPLE. As I am attending different tutorials from Pauline and my other friends, I attend tutorials by myself. I attempted to make friends but when everyone is just out to reap benefits academically, you give up.
Imagine:
1) People exchanging phone numbers and emails from you so that they can check tutorial answers with you. At the end of the day, they will tell you you don't lose out because they are sharing their answers with you too.
2) People enquiring the modules you are taking because they think at some point of time near the exams, you'll be able to help them out.
3) People asking you for your notes every single lecture to make sure they didn't miss out anything that you managed to catch hold of.
I am not referring to myself in particular. I am just pointing out what I observed in school, in lectures, in tutorials. It's not the issue about your willingness to share your notes or not. It's the competitiveness in the people around you that puts me off. Why can't we just help each other out without any strings attached? Why do you have to see everyone around you as a competitor?
Sometimes, I hate it! Someone, please do something to the education system!!!!!
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