Tertiary education

My exams finally ended last Thursday, and for some reason I didn’t feel particularly merdeka-ish about it, considering the fact that our Foundation programme is structured in a way that it becomes really holiday-stingy.

A recap of what/where I went for the last few days:

Friday: Yumcha at Leo’s, then dropped by for a while at McD’s as Jon was hungry and reached home at 1am.

Saturday: Scholarship interview at Sin Chew’s office in PJ, one of the interviewer was Ms Daisyga whom I know to be the head of my Foundation programme, and the other interviewer was the same lady from The Star interview I had a few days prior to Sin Chew’s, whom I suspect to be from Curtin’s office. Thought she was very direct and uptight beforehand, but she seemed okay during the entire 10-15 minutes, even mentioning that she already knows me quite well from that interview wtf. Thought I did okay – or better – than The Star interview, there weren’t any questions I thought were completely bizarre (“what would you do to bring Metropolitan to a higher level?” wtf). In the end she said I looked ‘blur’ last Wednesday heh.

The same night, went out DotA at Kaos SS15 with Ding, Heng, Shawn, Jon, and Fang Chyuan – 2 rounds of 3vs3 complete goodness. Ding and I went to Jon’s place after that at 12am with my laptop to attempt MapleStory’s latest Guild Quest, where we played along with Kai Shen and Koe Koe (sorta like a guild gathering!). :D Lots of teamwork/communication was required as the puzzles were tougher, and a certain amount of skills required to complete the jumping quests. Too bad Kai Shen kept disconnecting at the final stage twice till we finally resigned from playing.. at 4am plus wtfwtf. Reached home at 4.30am after dropping Ding off at the mamak near his house.

Sunday: Shawn, Ding and my first Japanese class from 12pm-2pm, the other student didn’t come today, and we were supposedly the first bunch of all-youths class our teacher has ever taught. Ate at Margaret Yong Tau Fu for lunch which was alright.

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It’s strange to say I want to stop studying completely and take a long break, after which I’ll reconsider the fact of whether I really want or need to pursue my tertiary education. I dunno about the most of you, but I find it really odd that we’re cultured and educated in the manner that tertiary education becomes the highest priority in our lives when we’ve just broke into the official legal age, that little barrier most of us probably secretly craved for but is of little importance, really.

And having studied for the past, what, 12 years, I began to seriously ponder the relevance of my studies in question – I was a Science student, yet Science as a career doesn’t really interest me since I was more inclined towards Arts. And now since I’ve just learnt that my college has limited majors for Curtin U as opposed to its twinning university overseas – which I currently have no interest to go due to its high costs, and the doubt that I’d be able to adjust to living abroad – does that mean I’ll have to take up a major that I have little interest in due to this limitation?

I think the bigger question is whether I’d be brave enough to take the first baby step to overrule this unwritten societal law – that I can be just as successful without having a single laminated degree certificate. In the event that I don’t get any of the scholarships I applied for, I have less incentive to want to continue my education – it uses so much money that in the end, do I really feel like an educated person? Ask me about the reaction of a certain acid + alkali and you’ll draw blanks from me – even though I managed to snag an A2 for Chemistry in my SPM.

It’s horribly odd really – look around at the classifieds/job vacancies at your local newspaper and you’ll discover that many of these companies’ minimum requirements is at least a diploma or a degree in any field. That would be more than enough to snag a job – albeit not a very high-paying job, I suppose. But even so, recently I read from a local publication’s job vacancy ad, and I discover that they don’t really require writers/journalists to have a cert of any sort in Mass Communication, something I’m quite interested to partake in the future. Which means that even with a Business degree, I can quite as easily snag that job.

But even with all this fury in writing, maybe I’ll still be one of the collective bees in a beehive, buzzing around like everyone else pursuing the exact same thing – tertiary education – even though we have zilch interest in it.