haix

sigh i slept my afternoon away.

i was trying to read my investing and after 4 pages, i just collapsed into deep sleep. zzz. 4 hours wasted sigh. now i need to chiong investing again in the night. must reach 160 by today at least.

and yeah i've decided that i'm not going for jap courses cuz 1. i don't know whether i have steam to learn it till the end and 2. the prices are quite expensive. so well, i guess i'll just have to self-study my sec 1 and sec 2 stuff and borrow stuff from lumpy to mug and go for jlpt myself. sounds impossible.

took some time to read my previous blog posts as well. it's quite interesting to read what you wrote before cuz 1. it gives you memories of the past and 2. you get to see how you've developed. i found out that i used to love putting "..." and "yar". i've now developed to putting "yeah" and fullstops instead. haha. WOAH DEVELOPMENT!

one thing that hasn't changed though is that i still use lots of "haha"s. wonder why.

but i must say my 4 years in RI have been wonderful. i used to wonder whether RI students actually learn less than others because we do lots of other stuff like presentations. but i guess it's a give and take. we could have learnt much more knowledge if we just focused on teaching and mugging for exams. but we just did what was required for O levels + a bit more for each subject and widened the breadth of learning, with presentations, public speaking, project work, Research Education, attachments, overseas learning journeys, PSLs...

in fact it is the latter which i guess i'll remember for life and not whether or not i could differentiate some random stuff. if i hadn't gone to RI, there would be no shanghai trip, no dwen an, no PSL experience, no OIP, no IBN, no SP, no Go6P...

i once wrote this on a blog post on May 09 2007

realise my last few posts are all about mugging? sigh. i think im obssessed liao.

i hate it, but i still do it. for the sake of my future.

I really wonder at times, whether what I learn now, will be of any use in the future. As I study how monosaccharides combine to become disaccharides via condensation reactions, I ask myself why am I studying this? Do I really care? Is JC really where I should go? Isn't poly a much more practical option?

Sometimes I admire people like Ben Yong who dare to change. In sec 2, I took triple sci for a simple reason, it was expected of most RI students to study the three sciences. But people like Ben Yong, even though getting into all 3 science RAs, decided to just take 2 sciences and 2 humans, knowing that biology wouldnt be much use to him.

And sometimes I admire people like Jinghui who manage to be so carefree about his studies yet still perform at a relatively high standard. How does he do it? Should I be like him?

I wonder at times whether I should be in an IP school, studying in the RP. I ask myself, what have I learnt in sec 1 and I've totally forgotten them. I can't even remember the most basic of math, the number line.

Is the O-Level people really lagging behind? Or are we the ones who seem to be faster yet in actual fact, we dont learn a thing. We learn them, and after they are tested, we throw them away to make space for the next thing.

Probably the reason why they added in the EOYs. But is this the end? The things I learnt in biology in sec 1, taxonomy, digestive systems, photosynthesis. I can't remember a single thing about them. All I can remember is that I studied them b4.

And sometimes, I ask myself, is this what I really want? Will this help me in the future?

"...you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever." - Steve Jobs

This quote has been on my blog for quite a few months. Yet every time I read it, I reflect on what I've done. Have I really placed my dots at where I want them to be? Will they really help me connect to what I will become in the future?

What do I want to become in the future? That's another great question which I have practically no answer to. I don't wanna do anything related to biology cuz I simply hate it. I took it cuz I was "forced" to. Or maybe not. but still it really isn't my passion. None in the humans side either. Definitely not languages, I'm not talented in that area. Physics and Chem. and maybe math. and maybe economics, accounting, business, engineering... I ask myself am I interested in these stuff. The answer is I honestly dont know. But for now, it's the direction I will head towards.

And have the way I studied, has my life in RI, helped me in anyway to achieve this?

Sometimes, I feel that I would have done much better in some other neighbourhood school.

But then again, would I? Or am I just misled to think in that way?

Have I pressed myself too hard? Have I stressed myself too far? I really want to become like Ben Yong or Jinghui, but I just can't get myself to do so. It's just impossible.

For now, I'll continue it my way. But I really doubt this will help me. I've gotta change.

Change for the better.

well, i guess i can safely say now that i didn't make a wrong choice. i've had a wonderful time in RI with my friends and everyone.

and as the year closes, it's time to look forward again. hope that RJC's gonna be as fun or even more fun than RI (:

let's go!

Patrick