Am Just A Girl

A couple of guys on facebook wrote differing perspectives on how they found their experience in Raffles (JC) to be like. One argued that Raffles conditioned “mindless robots” while the other wrote a chest thumping affirmation of his time there. 

Well. I wasn’t an IP student, nor was I from the Science stream. I was a St Nicks girl who entered the Humanities Programme- not knowing very much about the school other than the knowledge that the Humanz teachers were absolutely friendly (during the openhouse) and that Raffles was widely regarded as the top school. 

It’s fair to say that having graduated from the school, I’m not a huge fan of the way the school is run, not with the amount of red tape, the funny feeling that our school is a corporate entity (Raffles winning the Best Corporation Award or something, I’m not too clear on this point), or the way money is squandered on renovations or displays that don’t particularly make a lot of sense. The way the school changed perfectly good grey road tiles to red, for one. Or the fact that the school allocated a lot of money to council (really, a lot of money) which was spent on making displays of support to the rugby team or to openhouse material. This happened when some CCAs were relegated to the status of Special Interest Groups or had their CCA funding cut. 

However, since I clearly do not have the full details about the school’s decisions about these matters, let’s just say what I say may not be fully accurate. 

But what Raffles meant to me isn’t simply Raffles as an organization. Raffles isn’t just simply some bureaucratic entity obsessed with increasing the prestige of Raffles as a brand name school. 

Being in Raffles (the Humanities Programme in particular) gave me plenty of opportunities, making me embarrassingly privileged. Subsidised trips to Laos and Mount Ophir, museum trips during combined civics, tickets to watch Shakespeare and the Ballet and most of all, allowing me to learn from the best teachers I have ever had. My teachers didn’t encourage us to be lawyers or scholars. In fact, when I told Mr Rollason (Rolly!) that I was intending to be a lawyer (not for the money or the prestige, mind you) he grimaced  (yes, the same face he makes when he sees cuddly soft toys). They told us to do something interesting-something we loved. They told us about seniors who went on to study tourism in the University of Hawaii. Other seniors skipped off to open the Butter Factories. We certainly weren’t encouraged to choose the “doctor, lawyer, scholar route”, if we did, it was completely of our own volition-and not all of us chose this route for the reasons the first author asserted it to be. 

Mr Sowden, Mr Purvis, Mr Rolly, Ms Lye, Mr Reeves- all of them loved us and worked really hard to make our time in school to be fruitful, challenging and at the same time, supported us whenever we were down. Suffice to say, not all of us were the academic superhouses that the stereotype of Rafflesians made us to be. But our teachers challenged us to think outside the box, become more analytical, think bigger, think wider, think about what hasn’t been thought before. 

And not speaking or interacting with people of a supposedly “lesser social class”? I remember Mrs Toh (GP!) reminding us that she’d be disappointed if we went out into the big, bad world and thought ourselves to be more superior to the cleaners, the bus drivers, the downtrodden. Because they aren’t our inferiors. If anything, we should be grateful for them. 

If anything, the author of the second note should be ashamed of himself for trying to intimidate the other author (let’s call him lumpy, as fluffy has done). If anything, Raffles should have taught us to respect each other’s opinions. After all, isn’t that what good “thinkers, leaders and pioneers” do? Insulting him and his opinions reinforce the stereotype that Rafflesians are snobby and arrogant, something I’d like to refute, being one of them, (albeit only having joined in JC and being a true blue SNGS girl). 

I’m grateful to Raffles for all the opportunities that I’ve been given, though like all institutions and organizations, it does have faults and glaring flaws even, sometimes. 

suddenly, new opportunities await me. which is strange, considering I closed those options mentally already. I wonder. 

Sometimes it can be hard to read your newsfeed on facebook and realise that people around you are going off to wonderful universities and studying awesome courses- though usually I catch myself when I’m being a drama queen and feel sorry for myself and knock some sense into me. After all, I’m very very lucky already. I’m doing the course I’ve always wanted to do-and I’m feeling pretty excited about studying in a city campus. The student exchanges sound interesting, to say the least- Israel! China! Hong Kong! New Dehli! Not to mention other standard options like the UK, USA and France. 

I supposed it was easy to cruise along in the clouds, believing that things would always go my way and that my way would be the best and only way. Falling off the usual routine and expectations does open one’s eyes to different possibilities. Perhaps I’ll do well enough to get on dean’s list and win awards and do well enough to one day get a JD from Harvard or Princeton or Stanford as a post grad. Perhaps I’ll do well enough to win an internship in Hong Kong or New Dehli. The opportunities are endless-maybe more than I’ve ever imagined. 

I think I’m pretty blessed. At the risk of sounding Pollyanna-ish, life is wonderful after all. :) 

It’s not really the case of being lousier than my friends or peers (NUS tests aside)- but the hollow feeling I get when I know I can’t go do what I really, really want to do: go read law at LSE or UCL and get my first class back there, because I suspect my parents would be hard pressed to afford it. It’s so unfair that people can simply afford to pay their way easily, without any guilt whatsoever. 

And I’m stuck back here in Singapore feeling lonely and stupid-not because I’m not good enough but because the school’s too posh and expensive. 

Perhaps I should look into taking some student loan or something. 

The sudden realization that you’re just not good enough, hammered in by two old men sitting across you in an interview room is quite, quite devastating. I thought it would be alright, I’d be able to improvise better, think better, speak better, but I just prat-falled flat on my face. I disappoint myself a lot. 

Like the death penalty. I tried, and tried, and tried to justify it, and held fast to my beliefs even as they were testing me. And then tried to come up with good answers immediately, telling why I wanna go to their school, even when I got better ranked ones. Or why I’m on internships and working my butt off. 

Though they were kind in the end and told me that they’d hope that I’ll continue to do community service through pro bono and the stuff. And that I’m a nice child for putting my sister first, and me, second. 

I suppose I still have a chance on Sunday, with the written test. Though now I’m really looking at study loans and all that jazz.