Post Exam

This is the end of my third year in NUS. When school reopens, I'll officially be a Final Year, ending my school life.

I haven't been blogging in a gazillion years, and I have loads of things to say... yet I don't feel like blurting everything out in one night. I still have to rush out a bit more FYP readings before meeting my supervisor tomorrow, else I'll be really blur. Going home on Sunday afternoon, and back again in NUS on the Thursday after that for FYP meeting.

Just a recap about my modules this year.

Engineering in Drug Delivery - People who like to mug, can stand boredom, and can do differentiation properly should take this. The tutorial questions are horrible but exam questions are OK. Its like MA1505 and MA1506, if you know what I mean; only less intense, and there's plenty of chance to read up about drugs, which is what I liked. I wish the exam weight-age was more on the drug components and pharmacokinetics, it was so interesting and kind of important, but was not really emphasized on. The maths was OK, I could actually do everything, but I WOULD read the question wrongly and leave out the term 'gradient' behind the word 'concentration' behind a 50 mark question. I don't want to think of what grades I'd get for this module, it was the VERY FIRST TIME I could finish almost all questions in an exam paper (by almost all I mean 80-90%) and I have to leave a single word out in the question paper to kill my grades. Not to mention I had near perfect CA scores too. GAH. I guess being careless isn't a thing an engineer should be so I'll just take this lesson along with the others and trust God to give the grade that He feels I deserve.

Chem Eng Lab III - My very last lab - I don't know whether I'll ever be wearing my lab coat again. It already has holes here and there due to my dragging it here and there, and various stains too, from highlighter stains to spills here and there. I'm kind of glad that I don't need it for FYP or my attachment - it's too embarrassing to be displayed in public. Thank God for good lab mates, who are all very prompt and cooperative, that I have to say, this is the best lab group I have had for all three modules (sorry Kasun and Mich)! Its really hard to find 5 people who all put in their best effort together for a mere 2 MC module! Lab was fun, and for once all my vivas were OK! To K&M, you guys were great in a way too haha :)

Management and Organization: I was super happy I took this module... not because I was going to score in it or anything but I learned heaps from it, and now I'm very, very interested in HR! The video taught me more things than I thought it would: It was a very humbling process that forced me to open my eyes and admit all my faults when I was all alone thinking about it. Our video was not a bomb and it was the only one in the tutorial class that was not nominated for any form of award. But it was in this I learned how to really manage a group, and make good friends :) I saw all my weaknesses in managing people and a project, even though all my group mates saw were my good points (and I love them for seeing all that). Really took home a lot from there, only it was too late when I knew what I should and could have done. Well, it was just too late for this project, but not for future ones, I'm sure!

Consulting Skills for Transformational Leaders: Yew Hong always squirms when I say I'm taking a Level 3 Business module haha. I really like Business modules, and I believe that they are not going to be impracticable in an Engineering setting, especially the HR aspects. This module really complemented my Management and Organization module, and vice versa. MNO was broad, this was deep (and broad). The professor itself was enough to give anyone an inferiority complex. He had his Masters in Harvard, and PHD in Oxford, a Fellow in McKinsey consultant, help Malaysia set up the e-government system, worked in many countries and for many organizations, wrote numerous papers, taught management in China (and in Chinese). He's German, but he knows a whole lot of languages. He properly addressed and answered everyone of our weird, situational questions in class, and was very practical in his answers. He knows his values well and stands firmly by them. (And if all that is not enough, he's handsome too!) For all these, I shall forgive him of the Very Weird Question he set for us during exams, which I answered to the best of my ability. This module made me reflect a lot on my leadership qualities too - and thought of how I could have been a better leader in my project groups, in church, in RH CME. I was always the leader who labors, but not the leader who manages and plans. The leader who allocates everyone a job to do, and anxiously wait for results (and most occasionally is forced to finish the work myself), not the leader who inspires people to do work, and let them know and feel the work is meaningful. I have a lot to learn in leading, and in managing things in an organization.

FYP: There's nothing much to say about my FYP because its so broad that its confusing me and I'm still supposed to be looking things now at this hour. :X Thank God for a nice professor who is always encouraging and a helpful supervisor. Also thank God for Mei who is taking this project with me, so I'm not alone. In fact she makes me want to buck up because it looks like she's been so hardworking all the while and I've been neglecting my FYP for my other modules. Time is scarce and I only have less than two months to complete my work before I start my attachment in Shering Plough. Hence I'll have to buck up and sweat for it every day of the hols! And hopefully brush up my MATLAB skills in the process.

Concluding thought for the semester: I'm very, very interested in HR now, especially after talking to Yew Kwan when he helped me for my project for my Transformational Leaders module! And I'll taking the compulsory HR module for engineers next semester, so I'll be enjoying that too (hopefully)! Somehow I do wish that whatever job I'm taking up in the future has some HR element in it, although I'm not an MBA graduate. I wonder how that's going to happen but I know what I've learned this semester is somehow going to be put into good use through my life!

All this while I've been struggling with something else too... I'm still a bit hesitant to commit my service to God in one, unknown area, that I still don't know what it is. Need much prayer and guidance now for this :) My NUS journey has taught me how important it is, for a young person to dream dreams that are different, dreams different from what most inhabitants in this concrete jungle dream. I should dare to dream big, to do something for God. I wonder what that something is, but I hope I'll not be too timid, and selfish, to carry such a dream in my heart.