Education Rant
Studying used to be a privilege that only the best of the best, those with brains, money and time could afford (or you can just use money to override everything else). Studying is a means to know more information and upgrade yourself. Well, theoretically at least. It all sound very romantic, but that is just not true for me. The main reason why I even enrolled in college at all is because I have no idea what I want to do with my life and I'm dragging the deadline for a career. I don't know what I'm good at. I'm not good at anything. It's like, no matter how good you think you are or how much effort you put in to perfect your skill, there will always be a buttload more people way better than you. Good thing is, this thought keeps you humble. Bad thing is, it is also extremely depressing.
To be honest, there is nothing that is 100% this or that. Everything is a grey area. If white is good and black is bad, everything we have is just varying degrees of grey. Moral values, laws, family, technology.... So same goes for knowledge. If you know too little you are ignorant. If you know too much, you become judgemental because it is just easier for your brain to compartmentalise according to what you already know.
I am unable to enjoy studying. I'm trying to change that, but in my 15 years of education and conditioning according to society's demands, I was forced to learn things that only became progressively (how do I put this nicely) useless as I climbed the education sector. Honestly, what can I gain from knowing how to calculate the number of mols of a very specific and rare element, say cobalt, and what happens when you drop it in water or if you drop it in another equally unaccessible chemical. Really, what are the chances of you just happening by a piece of cobalt when walking on the road.
Of course, if I actually liked chemistry I might have found studying these reactions fascinating. I'm not saying I completely learned nothing from my 2 years in JC, but at this point which is about 8 months after my A Levels, I only retained about 10% of the information that my school shoved down my throat.
A few days ago I was just talking to my mom and I realised that hey, what happened to studying to quench your thirst of adventuring the unknown?
While I cannot account for education in other countries, I have been in Singapore education for 15 years of my 19-year life so I think I am pretty qualified to complain about the education system.
The whole point of schooling is no longer to educate us. Rather, we are all stuck in the never-ending paper chase where, somewhere along our evolution, a piece of paper with some writing on it becomes tantamount to decades of hard work and is known to employers as a decent enough judge of character. No, schools do not care how much information we actually retain after we leave them. They care only about the results we give in one round of gruelling examinations.
Ministry of Education may argue and say that they are trying very hard to promote an "all-rounded education" and they are, but that's not the point. Students are unable to receive an "all-rounded" education because we have reached the point where education has become a passive chore. The main purpose of schools has eventually become to train us to answer examination questions.
Take me for example. I did not understand a single crap about say Chemistry even after 6 years of "education". I knew what reactions would give what results, but I never understood why. I memorised it and managed to pass my exams, but really, I still understand Chemistry as much as when I was 14. I don't.
I am going off topic, ranting about the past 19 years of my life. I just... I don't know. It doesn't feel like 19 years well spent. My posts start nowhere and end nowhere. I don't have an introduction nor a conclusion. I just type whatever I'm thinking of right at the instant.... and perhaps, that's the beauty of informal writing.
Notice: Not that I'm hating on Chemistry (I totally am), it's just the hardest subject to study for me. I am a subjecist exercising subjecism on the subject Chemistry. (Yeah I'm lame like that.)
University Stuff
Oh yeah, about my university life, nothing much happened. I found out that Architecture students have absolutely no life and according to what Horsefly (formerly known as Poh or Lizzy) says and my observation of her recently deranged brain, most of the first-year architecture students have gone crazy staying up all night, night after night, to draw hundreds of lines, circles, and triangles.
A typical (wayy dramatised) scene in the archi studio: imagine yourself with baggy eyes, clouded mind and empty stomach, stuck in a enclosed air-conditioned room with many others in the same state as you as you draw, oh you draw, repeatedly, the same lines, lines, lines, hundreds of them, on gigantic pieces of A1-sized papers as you screw up paper after paper and have to repeat the whole process.
3 days of doing the same assignment, deprived of sleep, you finally manage to get your hand into a momentum. You are happy; relieved. You've never known such peace as your brain shuts down and your hand is able to move by itself. You start to get into your assignment. Lines start flowing perfectly from the pen that you paid too much for when suddenly, the guy sitting beside you starts laughing to himself. He stops. You ignore him and continue drawing your lines. One line, two lines, three lines. He laughs again, only this time, you detect a slightly more noticeable hint of insanity in his outburst. He must have triggered something in the room, because suddenly, the girl sitting at the back starts mumbling to herself. Her mumbles grow louder, louder, then they stop abruptly. You think it's over, you release the breath you didn't know you were holding. You start to turn back to your assignment, but he laughs again and she mumbles again. You are trapped. You are desperate. Help me.
Notice: Horsefly told me about the mumbling and the laughing but I made everything else up HAHAHA. If you want, you can make up a story about FASS students too. xD
Other Stuff
So... This happened.
Please tell me I'm not the only one who sees the rap. xD
This is proof that insanity is transferable from archi students (namely Horsefly) to us normal humans.
Bye~
