He's Blog

Reaping The Rewards Of Hard Work

// December 25th, 2011 // No Comments » // Life, School, Thoughts

I was checking my Mail today and I was surprised to receive an email from my Lecturer commending me for my good grade for his module, CS2103/T – Software Engineering.

In it, he wrote:

Dear Zi Shyun

Congratulations on getting in the the [A+..A-] band in last semester’s CS2103/T. A good grade such as this proves that you are good in both theory and practice side of Software Engineering. I’m impressed.

I hope you did equally well in other subjects and will turn out to be one of our top students over time. See you around next year!

Happy 2012!

-damith

This email marks the first time I’ve ever received an email of appraisal from a lecturer in NUS and damn, it actually has a pretty nice and heartwarming feeling to it.

Something about what Mr. Damith said on the last bit, I’m not exactly sure if I will end up as one of the top students because that kinda seems a little out of my reach. As a matter of fact, I do not aim to be part of the top students. I just want to be an above-average student and try to enjoy my university life.

Back to the email, although I doubt the content of the e-mail will vary from student to student, I sincerely thank Mr. Damith for taking the effort to individualize the emails instead of mass sending to the students that did well. Well maybe he wrote the program to do so but it doesn’t matter, it’s the thought of sincerity that ultimately counts. I’m not sure if lecturers realize this, but e-mails like this really helps to jolt and motivate students, especially the disadvantaged ones, like myself.

You may wonder why I call myself a disadvantaged student. To clarify, that is because I have no prior knowledge to any sort of programming before pursuing a Computer Science degree in NUS. I studied Arts, more specifically Filmmaking, in polytechnic and that means I receive neither the same kind of analytical and mathematical training the JC students or foreign students underwent nor the related computing knowledge that Computing poly students get. But thankfully, I did work hard in high school and that made catching up a littler easier, but does not in anyway reduce the difficulty level.

As a recipient of this email, I’m feel really happy deep down inside seeing that a lecturer has recognized my hard work. More importantly, it made me realize that all the long and painful hours that I have invested in this semester have paid off really well with good grades. And what makes me happy is knowing that it is actually possible for a disadvantaged student to do well by working really hard and such affirmation motivates me to continue working hard next semester.

Speaking of which brings us to a famous quote by Albert Einstein

“Genius is 1% talent and 99% percent hard work…”

Now if you do the math, it’s true that a non talented person who gives his best will always lose to a talented person who similarly gives his best. But understand that not every talented person will give his best, much less even reach 100%. Even if they do, you’ll only lose them by that mere 1%. And honestly? 99% is still a very nice number to sit at, well, at least for me. ;)

A Day Worth Remembering

// December 1st, 2011 // No Comments » // Life, Photos, School, Thoughts

As you probably have read, I finished my first paper, General Biology, on the 19th of November. And now, after an additional 11 days of hardcore studying, I have finally cleared my last paper and this effectively puts an end to my 3rd semester in NUS. Whooooo! *whirls arms in air and shakes head like mad.

“The battle of the brains have come to an end. Please quickly finish up what you are writing and stop writing,” my lecturer announced, signalling the end of the examination and also the start of our freedom… well at least for the time being before the next semester comes kicking in.

As promised, Shawn, Guo Wei and I traversed (computing term =X) to the nearby Engineering faculty to celebrate our temporary freedom with our favorite comfort food – McDonald’s. After much consideration, I got myself an upsized McSpicy meal. In fact, the three of us got McSpicy meals. And as we indulge in our comfort food, the three of us also discussed about the exam questions, and this eventually digressed into other topics such as Guo Wei’s favorite topic – money.

After our fufilling burger lunch, there was another objective lined up for us to accomplish. This particular objective was brought up by Guo Wei whom I quote, “After CS2010 paper, we’ll have all the time and we are going to at Starbucks until our ass turn sore”. So, off to Starbucks we went.

At Starbucks, we settled ourselves at the generously spacious couches and talked about almost everything that guys would love to discuss about – girls, money, jobs and whatnot. In the end, we really sat at Starbucks for over 3 hours until our asses started to ache so bad. But just before we parted, Shawn somehow just had to suggest playing arcade and the three of us ended up at West Mall’s Time Zone. We topped up 25 dollars of credit and ended up playing the hammer of strength, punching bag, basketball, shooters, bishi-bashi clone, Daytona, Stacking game, and Street Fighter IV. It was surprisingly fun, considering that I rarely play arcade. Now, in case that last sentence caused you to raise an eye brow, no… playing lots of computer games does not mean you play lots of arcade.

We finally parted and went our seperate ways for our own night activities. It was a day well spent and definitely a day worth remembering.

Here’s a picture of the three of us taken at NUS YIH’s Starbucks:

That’s about all I have for now. I shall leave my reflection on this semester for a later date. ;)

Parting Words

// November 19th, 2011 // No Comments » // Life, School, Thoughts

This is going to be a short and quick post. I just finished my General Biology examination eariler today and while I am glad that it has finally come to an end, I kinda felt sad as this would mean that I will have to part from two wonderful lecturers that had taught the module. So I took the time off and wrote a message in the forum, thanking them for the efforts in making a supposedly dry module such an interesting subject.

Dr. Seow, Dr. Zeehan and all lab assistants,

The time has come for us to part and I would just like to take some time off to thank you all for such a wonderful experience in LSM1301. I hail from the School of Computing and although Science is not my forte nor area of interest, I have definitely enjoyed learning about the Science of Life, Biology. The enthusiasm and passion you all displayed in lecture have made Biology so much more interesting than the other Science modules I have taken so far. The efforts are very much appreciated and while my words alone do not do them justice, it sure does beat keeping my gratitude silent.

So a big thank you to you all once again.

Hope to see you all around in Faculty of Science some day.

Jacky.

I certainly hope that they get to see the message before they take down the module website.

Anyways, gonna rest up a bit and head back to my muggin’. ;(

Update: Dr Seow has read my message and responded to it.

Dear Jacky

Thank you very much for the kind words of compliments. It is always a great encouragement to the teaching team to know that our efforts in ensuring that the module is both enriching as well as enjoyable have not been wasted and have been successful.

All the best in the rest of your examinations. Please say ‘Hi’ when you do see us, whether in or out of the campus.

Regards
SEOW Teck Keong

Definitely. You bet I will ;)

Signs off,
He