Summary of my thoughts and life in NUS

Hi friends,

I am a senior student in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and I will like to share with you what is going on with my life which I have kept in secret for a long time. Only my family knows roughly what is going on with me, but even then they don’t understand all of the as they don’t know how the university admin system works. I am in the last year (not semester) of my course and I am going to graduate in December 2008. I am going to share with you a summary of my life in NUS... But I am not going to describe my modules or project in this post lah!!! I am not a lecturer by the way

I admit I wasted the first 2 years of my university life procrastinating and blur about what is happening in NUS and what I am supposed to do. I thought I was wasting my parent $6000 a year spending money and then only to “return back” what I have learnt back to the lecturers. I was so blur that I even don’t know what modules to take and take many rojak modules during my first 2 years. It was only after the Chemical Engineering Admin talked to me about my plans then I know what is going on and register for the right modules. I was literally repeating year 2... It was in my 3rd year of study I woke up, and study the right modules and I have to cram the rest of the course which other people use 3 years to complete with 5 semesters. It was a bad blow to my self esteem that I had to study modules with students 1 year my junior. I admit I did not do well for many of my modules as I have quite a number of Cs and Ds and there are only 2 modules I have an A-. My CAP was not even enough for a 3rd class honours (only a BEng pass). But I will try my best for the rest of this year to pull up my CAP to get a third class honours. I am juggling with 2 heavy projects, the Design Project and Research Project.

There are several reasons why I did not do well in this course. I had low self- esteem and don’t believe I can beat those scholars. Maths is not really my forte and I did not do well in those subjects that require a lot of Maths. I am at a disadvantage as compared with those Maths experts. I envy people who can do an easy question within 10 minutes and I have to take half an hour or even 1 hour to do. That puts me at a disadvantage in an exam when I spend too much time pondering (poor time management) over a question and then when I want to do those easy questions the time is up and lost a lot of points due to that. Of course, I can do Chemistry question almost as fast as the scholars and even spot mistake in those questions. I am quite an expert in Chemistry and I believe I can do well in the Chemistry-based research projects. Another reason I don’t do well in my course is because many of the lecturers are boring and their lecture is a cure for insomnia. Some of the lecturers present too much Maths or Physics equations and not much diagrams to prove their formulas. Some lecturers speak in monotone and have poor command of English. Some lecturers seem to be irritating to me, with weird facial expression or eye expression which makes me feel uncomfortable. There are only a few lecturers I like out of the 60+ lecturers that have taught me.

Lastly, I will talk about my aspirations. I did dream of being a famous chemist with some accomplishments in my life like making a cure for AIDS or using environmentally friendly products. But after so many struggles with my university life I doubt I can do it. The best which I can do is to be a process engineer which is not a challenging job like what my lecturers said. I will really want to produce an excellent project so that I can get my dream job and dream employer. I also believe that God will help me to achieve great heights, but of course I need to believe in myself first. I used to be a lazy unmotivated bum, but after I sign up for the research projects I get to know what those lecturers really do besides teaching, they did some research behind the scenes and some of the research they have done can get patents and market out to those chemical industries to help them save money, find better drug delivery systems or better membranes for various purposes. It’s a tedious job to handle 2 projects in the same semester, but for the sake of my future I will work hard and excel in both projects. I will not like to end up as a test tube washer or lab technician in some research lab but be an active part of a research team.  I definately believe God will fulfil my wishes but I must believe in myself first.