The things I learn in uni

Over dinner, Taitat asked me what I'll be doing for the rest of the night.

"study loh, what else?"

Instead, I've
1) played 3 games of warcraft
2) read strangers' blogs
3)checked my email
4)ate a second dinner

Then, I remembered what I was supposed to do. A sense of guilt hit me and I questioned myself "what am I doing in school???"

Almost immediately, I answered my own question. The guilt went away as quickly as it came. I never believe that I'm in school to learn the scientific theories or the equations, judging at the things the professors throw to us. I'm supposed to memorise these things so i can get the papers of certification at the end of the day.

Still, I know my time in Uni will not be wasted. I believe tertiary education is very important. What you get out of it really depends on what you do. The aspiring engineers sleep with their textbooks, the future entrepreneurs will set up booths in school carnivals, prospective journalists write for the school papers, potential leaders take up leadership roles in the school population and hermits lock themselves in their room.

For me, I'm looking for life skills and a diversified experience. I'm gaining a bit of both everyday. NPCC requires me to do alot of planning and management. I have never written so many proposals in my life before. It gets better everytime I do one. I also have to work with different people on different projects, and that teaches me how to PR. I accquired some leadership skills while leading different groups of people.

I realised that even the simplest thing can be a very valuable lesson. Manning booth requires spontaneity, organising a camp requires detailed planning, painting a banner requires good coordination and creativity, being the technical crew in a stage production requires accuracy and proposing a new idea requires one to be persuasive.

Even in conflict management, there's three different things to master; ability to negotiate, ability to mediate, ability to come up with resolution. (As what i heard from Winston).

I devote 80% of my time (waking time) to my extra curriculum activities. Hence, I'm able to get over the guilt of not studying hard. The returns of my activities reward much better than senselss equations. I won't want to graduate to be only proficient in solving maths problems, knowing nothing about working.