Pasttime

Since it’s this end of the year, I was chatting with some people over the weekend about resuits. Between all the laments about carelessness and the like, something surprising came from an unexpected place – someone declared that he felt inferior to his (new) class and wants to leave it.First, a little background. I’m from the Programme in Nanyang, from a class which produced someone with 280+ in the PSLE. That’s the kind of competition I was up against for three years, resulting in all too many English teachers sighing and putting me down for remedials, all kinds of teachers chasing me for file checks, and an average low enough to put me on review, probation, then one strangely insignificant group meeting with a counsellor. Coming out from the PSLE with a milk of the cream score disappointed others way more than me. I was fine with it.Through all that, I don’t remember being overawed by my classmates. Never mind that almost all of them went to HCI and RI – I was so unconcerned about it that I (almost) didn’t apply for DSA anywhere. Not surprisingly, nothing came out from the one attempt.With the benefit of crystal clear hindsight, I had and have no regrets. I didn’t feel too bad about being at the bottom of the heap – I knew I couldn’t match most of my classmates, and I was fine with leaving things as they were. No inferiority complex. I broke down twice in those years, spaced about a year apart, and both incidents had nothing to do with results.Coming here and mixing with the bottom of the heap of us GEPs was a very rude culture shock. Moving from muggerland was nausea inducing – wow, so much time on my hands! On the other hand it did put things into perspective very quickly. Moving from lining the floor to competing for the top in the small Chinese class definitely feels very good – and so was realising that it could be done under 70%.After one year in the IP, my marks have gone up. I’m more than passing my Lit (previously failing), though I suspect that’s because of even more leniant marking, not that I have increased much in skill. Whichever explanation I prefer to believe, it’s still pretty good on the mind – never mind that we’ll have to pay dearly for our two (or four) years of slacking once we hit the actual IBDP years.Bringing us back full circle, this friend – who’s doing pretty well in the IP – now thinks he’s not doing well enough. In terms of ranking, he’s not in the top quarter of the class, versus being nearly at the top in the previous class. While we were chatting about this, he named a couple of people, our extremely high flyers, as examples for comparison; somehow, he’s convinced that he’s inferior. Even if that’s true.. these are the people from the Programme, who get 270+ aggregate for their PSLE – purely academically they should be in a different league from you, you who lies at the bottom of the pile. Apples with oranges, and brussel sprouts, all in one barrel. ”So what?“

Powers

A couple of days back, I was about to start blogging about my Christmas wishlist when there was a(n unexpectedly near) flash of lightning outside and the power tripped. So, there goes a UPS, straight to the top of my list.

Since then, a couple more things have popped up on my list – one of them being a new LCD panel. Does anyone want to offer me a job?

Is planning your career limiting your career? This guy points out that you ought to develop skills and grab opportunities as they come – that’s not entirely bad advice, but I’ve seen some people who literally just bounce around from thing to thing within a matter of days. Nothing much gets accomplished while that’s going on.

I’ll blog my thoughts about what some people have nicknamed a ‘revolutionary meeting’ later.