So The First Semester's Over

I'm not particularly sure where I'm going with this, because the last time I really (and I mean really, really kinda really) wrote in this blog was when I did this carefully-constructed essay, written over the space of two weeks, and I'm not sure I want to do something like that ever again. (The drafts I wrote and discarded, for that essay, are still floating about somewhere in the bowels of my hard disc, in the form of an overstuffed Scrivener project.) But anyway. Digressing. Here goes.

The first sem's over, my holidays are halfway done, and my results are ... well my results aren't that bad, to be honest. But I'll get to my results in a bit; got a few other things to talk about first.

I'd like to talk a bit about Singapore. I think most of us know, by now, that different cities tell us different things. This is particularly clear when you've lived for sometime in one city, and then you move - rather abruptly - to live in another. Take New York, for instance. New York tells you that you should be wealthier; that you should have better class; better taste. Compare this to Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley tells you that you should have more influence. That's not to say that people in the valley aren't impressed by wealth; they're rather more impressed if you're in charge of digital operations in Google, say, than by the fact that you're rich. Apply this to other cities and you'll have variations on the same theme: Cambridge, Massachusetts tells you that you should be smarter; Los Angeles tells you that you should be more famous.

Singapore, if anything, tells you that you should work harder.

This isn't particularly surprising, not if we take into account the fact that Singapore is one of the most meritocratic countries on the planet. But it does take some getting used to, and it does bear some thinking about. I now know why even Singapore - glorious, bright, beautiful Singapore - has its own brain-drain: people just can't stand the crazy lifestyle.

I'm bringing this up because I'm back in Kuching now, and Kuching is worlds apart from the pressure-cooker environment of the city-state. Kuching tells you to take things slow. To relax a little. To drive, and drink teh-c-special, and go to church with friends. (Okay, so maybe I'm not the best person to talk about Kuching, which is at best sleepy and at worse ... corrupted, but you get the idea).

I love Kuching. I love the fact that the city doesn't tell you how to live your life, and you're free to go about doing things the way you want to do things, and that you can go out for lunch with friends, safe in the knowledge that there's always a bowl of laksa out there with your name on it. Always.

Ain't that just cool?

I spent the first half of my holiday going out with friends. And now - in the second half - I'm forcing myself to stay indoors to do some serious web development (which is failing, of course, because I can barely sit in one place without writing or reading or doing some meddlesome Internet thing. Like blogging. Which is what I'm doing now. Very quaint, yes.)

And what of my results? I got a 3.83 (out of 5.00) for my first sem, which is okay, considering I entered university feeling absolutely distraught over my academic ability. The strangest thing about my results was that I got 2As for two arts modules; which isn't particularly encouraging, since I didn't spend much time studying for either.

I also got a C+ for Discrete Math, which was a real disappointment. Math takes a lot of work and so in retrospect I guess I should've stuck with it, hard, for the first three weeks, instead of falling behind on the logic chapters. There were some cool topics in the module though; I particularly enjoyed graph theory and induction. I just couldn't keep up with the rest, and so am starting to worry if I have what it takes to do a degree in Computer Science.

So what have I learnt this first semester in NUS?

I've learnt programming, which was really, really fun. And I know that Java isn't a really good language to start your programming career with, but boy oh boy was it easy to learn, and cool, and so very satisfying. Java reminded me of playing with lego, and what geek can say no to lego? And the strange thing is that I've been reading articles out there, about how Java's bad for new students (because it doesn't teach this multiple-level-of-abstraction style of thinking that Scheme/Lisp supposedly does), but no matter. The way I see it is that there's no point worrying about a talent I may or may not have, and since I'm pretty dead-set on this programming thing, I'm sure that I'll figure out if I have it sooner or later.

What else have I learnt? I took a year-3 theatre module and got an A for it, without too much effort, and from that I've learnt to read literary novels. I read Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials shortly after I took the module, and I must say that I was taken by surprise by how easy it now was to get, really get, what he was trying to say. So that was one module that was certainly worth it, in a no-relevance-to-my-career kinda way.

And there's also this thing I've learnt about arts programs, particularly at University level, which is really weird, but I'm going to save that for another day. Forgive me if I'm not making sense - posts like this tend to happen once every year, right after my exams. More coherent thoughts coming in a bit.

The Fear

So here's the thing. I have only one exam left, and it's still bad. I've figured out by now that I'm scared of exams. As in, phobic. As in psychologically-scarred-when-young-because-cat-bites-you-and-you-now-no-like-cats kinda scared. It's probably the STPM speaking again. Can't shake it off. And so but yeah, I got into university because I did a few really cool things. So what? I know you're going to tell me that academics don't matter, but fact remains, when you're in school and you're studying because it costs so damn much per semester, comments like that don't seem real. No kidding, you say. But academics do matter, especially when you're talking about an exam-oriented society like ours. (Yes - if it makes you feel better it's the same thing in Singapore). And so it's rather anal - you're studying programming, say - which is the most practical thing you'll study in my course - and then you meet people who're all about "How many marks did you get?" and "I thought they might ask this in the exam, so I worked on it!" and "Ah I didn't get full marks for that lab" and the focus suddenly becomes scoring As, instead of learning the tools for the sake of learning the tools, and/or you do things because you want to beat all the other people so you can win that scholarship/bursary/summa cum laude.

I know this is unfair of me, especially since we don't really have any alternative to exams, and marks, and bell-curves. But it's produced really strange behaviour, all around us. Like, for instance, you're discussing the application of ethics on computing in the real world, and the discussion suddenly turns into a 'how to answer this for the exam?' smooge fest. Have you had an experience like that? Have you thought it strange? I have! I find it very strange! I couldn't get my head around it! Why on earth would you talk exams, if ethical conundrums and technological paradoxes really might happen to you in your professional life, later on? Has this no relevance to your life, beyond the testpaper?

But even as I'm saying these things, a small voice at the back of my head tells me that I have no right to talk. Who am I, after all? I have no good reason to strut into classrooms, looking like I understand the technicalities of everything being taught before me; nor do I have the confidence borne from a long history of academic excellence. I am a scraper. I am a weird hodgepodge of talents that don't count in any academic assessment. I am a square peg in a round hole (or was it the other way around?) And no, I am not very useful in an exam ... in everything else, yes; in the real world, maybe - but in an exam it feels, at times, like I am a sneak. I know I should stop ranting. But it's frightening to pause and think of all the exams ahead of me in the next four years, and all the other academicos that I have to compete with. Fours years. Rather long time. Frightening indeed.