What My First Semester in NUS Has Taught Me
Background:
Major: Business Analytics
Faculty: Computing
Programming Experience (prior to starting school): close to ZERO
Campus Accommodation: College of Alice and Peter Tan (CAPT)
*Disclaimer (what this article is NOT)*
- How to rekt (wreck) everyone else in your cohort
- How to get a Cumulative Average Point (CAP) of 5.0
- How to not make any mistakes in your first semester
Opening Thoughts:
Each semester has 15 weeks, inclusive of recess week (to prepare for mid-term tests) and reading week (to prepare for finals). It may seem like a real drag, but after week 6, time truly flies and before you know it you’re sitting for your final exams wondering if you’ll pull through. Every week usually consists of lectures to attend/watch, tutorials to prepare or assignments to submit, and most of the time, there’s JUST enough time to complete them.
In my honest opinion, if I could choose three words to describe university (in particular NUS) life, I’ll choose “fast and furious”.
The word “fast” because once the content for a particular chapter is covered in both lecture and tutorial for that week, it is BARELY EVER revisited again.
The word “furious” because the content itself is often difficult to grasp and to make matters worse, professors (profs) will seldom throw you a standard question to solve. It’s all about applying what you learnt in exam conditions to solve perplexing problems. (yes I am hinting at you CS1010S :< )
That being said, not all is gloom and doom for us NUS students.
- The campus buildings and facilities are great (minus the crazy-packed shuttle bus/roller coaster).
- Friends to study and complain with does help in alleviating things
- Most of the teaching staff would be willing to help if/when we ask
So back to what my first semester has taught me…
Sure, I learnt some basic programming (Python and R), some calculus (Differential Equations?!) and some statistics, all of which just about anyone can share with you about also, and definitely to a better degree than myself. Yet the intangible lessons and experiences throughout the semester are what I found valuable enough to reflect upon and share. Here’s what they are in brief:
- Comparison
- Mental Health
- Friends
1. Comparison:
“Comparison is the thief of joy” — Theodore Roosevelt
This should come as no surprise but I doubt many people (myself included) can actually internalise the point on comparison and live it out. For the large majority of us Singaporeans, we have been thrown into a rat race and drilled since young to study hard so as to make it to a prestigious course in a local university and then find a well-paying job to pay for a nice house and fancy car (and so on…). That being said, even after one has made it to the course of their choosing in university, the unrelenting emphasis on grades is still present. Almost everyone talks about gunning for first-class honours i.e. CAP ≥ 4.5 or what scholarships to apply for so as to improve their chances at securing a “good” job.
Regardless of whether you’re among the top scorers in your Junior College (JC) or Polytechnic (Poly), it is assumed that everyone starts with a clean slate in university. But honestly, there are tonnes of people who are “kiasu” (colloquial Singlish for being afraid to lose out to others) and already took courses/read module content to give themselves an edge over the rest.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with setting goals for yourself (eg. first-class honours) or making good use of the long break before university to familiarise yourself with the content you’ll be taught. I also searched for crash courses on programming to prepare myself, but observing the harsh competitiveness among my peers made me question, are we actually learning anything or are we ultimately chasing materialism?
I stepped into my first semester in NUS believing that graduating with a CAP of 4.0 and above would be enough for me, but it didn’t take long for me to realise that it’s a whole new ball game in university. My mid-term tests were nasty. For CS1010S (Programming Methodology using Python) I was below the 25th percentile and for BT1101 (Introduction to Business Analytics using R), I got a B-. Among my friends taking the same modules, I was effectively doing the worst (there was a friend who even scored more than TWICE my score).
Being in such a scenario, where your friends are doing great and you’re performing real badly, it’s so easy for envy to crawl into your heart and dictate your response and interaction towards them. I noticed (disgustingly) that I even found it somewhat difficult to celebrate their good results and that part of me even wanted to talk to them less?! (Maybe its just me and everyone else is a saint).
Upon seeing my ugly response towards this issue, I prayed to see all of it with a different perspective, and I am so glad that I can place my hopes on something eternal and never-changing. In doing so, I continuously release whatever hidden fears and anxieties I harbour onto Him who holds all things.
Just to add on, it might be common to hear from many seniors that their CAP is >4.0, but the median CAP upon graduation is actually somewhere closer to 3.5?
Perhaps those seniors who didn’t achieve above CAP 4.0 weren’t comfortable with sharing their CAP, while those that did were more than happy to share their results. There are also other factors to account for such as the difference in average CAP between faculties and number of S/Us (option to render a module grade-less) exercised etc. Hence possibly accounting for this assumption that almost everyone has a CAP >4.0 .
What I am driving at here, is that not everyone does well academically in university, and for those who do not (such as myself), keeping yourself in check is key. A moment of envy and comparison is merely the first step in a spiralling path towards the loss of many friendships and a whole lot of bitterness.
2. Mental Health
“Just keep swimming” — Dory from “Finding Nemo”
All my life I never thought I would be writing on mental health. Sure, I faced stress and anxiety whilst preparing for major examinations like the GCE ‘O’-Levels and GCE ‘A’-Levels or during my National Service (NS) whilst in the Navy. But these scenarios have never caused me to be worried so much so the topic of mental health would surface.
Somewhere towards the end of the semester, I found myself struggling to keep up the tempo academically. Also, it didn’t help that the content taught in the final few weeks were also the most difficult. I was “burning-out” despite thinking that I had started well.
I recall myself being increasingly withdrawn (socially), where I would just rush off after lessons straight back to my room in CAPT so as to study. I cut down on exercise and social activities on campus, and would even eat alone so as to not “waste time unnecessarily”. Even more distressingly, my mood would be erratic and I found myself having trouble sleeping on bad days, fearful that I could not achieve a certain CAP or would even have to retake modules.
This carried on for close to a week and I knew it wouldn’t be long before I went into depression. It took me a while to snap out of it and I did, when I could see my situation with a different lens. Our lives are so much more than just the mere digits (CAP) on our transcripts. Truth be told, while CAP may be used to determine the capability of students for their first jobs (especially in the public sector), in the long run it’s not as critical as most people think it is, since subsequent jobs would depend on one’s experience and performance.There are also other avenues to prove oneself to their prospective employers, such as projects, internships and competitions etc.
As such, it would be risky to place the assurance of one’s identity on academics. If it it fails you (no pun intended), your mental health and outlook on life would surely take a beating. Main takeaway: Academics are important, but more so our well-being.
3. Friends
“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’ ” — C.S. Lewis
Most people would say that the years they had while in university were probably the best time to socialise and have fun. What I found out through the course of this semester was that yes that’s true, but there’s also some sort of intentionality involved. Unlike in JC where form classes are fixed and social interaction a given due to these structures, university gives you the freedom to choose which modules to take up and at what time-slot. You can choose to take them with friends or do them alone.
Essentially, you have the choice of being a complete “phantom” (someone who is barely seen or heard) in school, being physically present for lessons and disappearing soon after. Not sure about others (especially the extroverted ones), but I know that initiating the FIRST conversation to make friends is REALLY tough.
It’s as though there’s this great inertia for whatever reason, in saying “Hello, I am …” . That being said, it’s so easy to attend lectures and tutorials without making any friends, and just quietly leave afterwards.
However, friends really do make a difference. With friends in university, you can:
- Get academic help from peers and study together
- Not be lonely while eating at the canteens
- Motivate each other during tough periods (recess/reading week)
- Complain to each other to about the system
- Have fun together beyond academics
- Exercise together? (far-fetched but still very possible)
The chances are that you’ll be likely to meet people from your previous phases of life in university as well, and being creatures who love being in the comfort zone, we will gravitate towards reconnecting with them instead of making new friends. Well… you could do that, but there’s seriously no harm in broadening your social circle to include both old and new friends. A friend gained is a stranger/enemy lost.
Concluding Thoughts:
The 3 to 4 years that we have in university will probably be some of the most formative years of our adult lives. At this age, our teachers and even our parents would have taken (most of) their hands-off us. Such freedom can be liberating but it can also be daunting. The onus rests on us to navigate through the opportunities and traps around us, and make the most of the years ahead. Life is a race that is unpredictably short where opportunities exist in windows and there’s always something to be learnt at every juncture.
