Lessons I wish I knew before I started University.

It's the last day of school, 4 years of school did fly by faster than I would like it to. It is really a mixed bag of feelings when I know that I will be shedding my identity as a student, an identity we have all grown tremendously under and on many occasions, sheltered us when we were fragile.

The end of school life does different things to different people. Some rejoice its end, choosing to view it as a burden of sorts while some are apprehensive, unsure about how it will be like in just a few months to come. I choose to savour the last bits of school, choose to remember all the lessons I have learnt and be grateful to all the people who made me who I am today. I can't turn back time, and with the benefit of hindsight, here's some lessons I wish I knew before I started University.

I know it's not always easy to agree with everything I say, but it's just opinions that even I myself may change in time to come.

8 things I wish I knew before I started University

1. What you consume will shape you more than you want it to.
The world has evolved tremendously with the advent of the information technology. Everyday we are bombarded with an endless stream of marketing material exhorting the latest gadgets, the ideal lifestyle, what you should do while you're in school etc. Intriguingly, how many of us actually bother to examine the credibility or rationale behind the information you receive? 

When you choose to buy into a lifestyle, the cafe culture, the hottest new blogshop girls. Every moment when you turn on your computer to stalk on their lives, flip through your Facebook to read the latest thought catalog on the things you should have done by your late 20s, we are all consuming something. I used to think I had complete control over who or what I am influenced by, but in retrospect, I think not. When you start following famous pretty bloggers/models, inadvertently you start thinking that the ideal lifestyle includes endless selfies, high tea parties and empty praises from girls you don't even know on social media. Or if you consume news about all the latest entrepreneur whiz kids, financial trends and investment news, you start dreaming of being your own boss, owning that star business or being that rich financier with all your fancy cars and houses.

Initially, I would go pfft at someone who said that centering your life around finance would make me materialistic. But now after 4 years of school, and seeing the diverse interests and lifestyles of the people around me, it is pretty shocking to realise how much I have grown into those little things I've consumed over the years. 

Granted, nobody has a right to say what's right or what's wrong. The point is not to judge anyway, rather, the point lies in the awareness that whatever products/media/thoughts we choose to consume on any platform of our lives, will shape us in more ways than one.

And the thing I'm uncomfortable with, is how we are all addicted to social media, thinking that we now have access to so much more information about others, but don't forget that every time you stare at that little screen of yours, you are allowing others to plant ideas in your head. So choose wisely, for what you see may start defining you without you realising it. 

This is what happened to me at least, and I wish I knew this better when I was younger.

2. Self awareness: the key to setting the direction of your life
This has always been on the top of my mind, something I've come to understand better in my final year. School has blessed me with a fantastic opportunity to discover myself, and I have gained tremendous amounts of self awareness through a series of good and bad encounters. When I was in my first year, self awareness came to me in the form of what I wanted, and my hunger for success and excellence in my time here. There I was all happy and proud I know what I wanted to do, getting a good CAP and thinking I got my life figured out.

Now? I'm just laughing at how naive I was.

Being focused on being successful provided immense drive in everything I do, but it did not provide a direction in my life. I just followed what was defined as the ideal direction to head in life.

As the euphoria of academic excellence wore off, and the road became a lot rockier, I gained and lost friends, knowledge and whole lot of other things, and suddenly I became a lot more comfortable with myself.

It was about knowing what I was good and bad at and being able to come to terms with it. It not about the defensive retorts to cover my downfalls, but acknowledging them to allow yourself to learn and benefit from it. It not about pushing your group to achieve the best results at all costs, but respect for what others want with their lives at school. 
It's tough, but accepting who I was felt so much more liberating than being able to score those As in the exams or being able to earn that couple of thousand bucks in stocks. I wasn't going to be the best, but at least now, I know what I want with my life much better than before. And the best part is, the determination and drive just gets stronger.

3. YOLO: A misconstrued phenomenon?

This is a bitching point, haha. Just to get it clear first. The use of the phrase "You Only Live Once", or YOLO for short, just exploded exponentially towards graduation. I don't know who sensationalised it, but it irks me tremendously when people use it with wanton apathy and disrespect.

Just for the record, in my opinion, people have been "YOLO-ing" for as long as we existed. The true YOLO spirit that is worth assimilating is the one that pushed people into new frontiers, to do things that society said they should or could not. Our forefathers YOLO-ed their way into Singapore to fight and forge the tremendous success that we all enjoy today. Visionaries YOLO-ed their way to create the many feats of civilisation we see today.

Contrast that with what I see today, my goodness. These are real life encounters I encounter with increasing frequency (disclaimer: there is probably some exaggeration given my emotional involvement with this topic)

1."Oh it's the exams tomorrow, but fuck it, I'm gonna YOLO and go and drink and club with my friends"
2. "Damn there's so many assignments and projects due in a few weeks time, I know I'm going to suffer for it but YOLO, I'm going to party with my hunks and babes non stop, all night, I rave, I drink, I sleep, repeat."
3. "This doesn't sound like a good idea, but whatever man I'll do it, YOLO!"

Of course you can YOLO, you don't know or care about your project mates that has to work through the night or sacrifice their grades to clean your shit, or care about your family and the people who have sacrificed so much to give you the best they have, only for you to squander it away recklessly.

It's always good to live it up and have fun, but I think it shouldn't be confused with addiction and lack of self discipline.

I don't know about you, but when I hear this, I just feel ashamed as how spoiled and pampered we have been in this developed world we live in. I also wish that the younger me knew this better, and that I would have been more responsible and sensitive to others out there who indulged me when I decided to be selfish in my pursuits.

4. It's excuses that breaks a man.
I often term excuses as a daily drug. Those of us all hooked up with this drug will find it hard to wean off and not rely on it in our daily lives. After all, it's free, doesn't harm our body and it's so widely accepted anyways. I myself use it and I am shameful of it. If I may make a comment, I would like to say that there's a difference between constraints of a particular set of circumstances, and downright laziness. 

I don't think it's possible that nobody has their moments of laziness, but slathering it with righteous excuses harms nobody but yourself.

Excuses blind our perceptions, protects our egos and gives us the signal that everything is all okay and all. But before long, I felt so inept using excuses to cover up my laziness or flaws because I was proud or that I did not want to be judged. I was my own biggest obstacle, because my excuses prevented me from seeing myself in my barest form, and that I was NOT ok, and I was NOT doing well at all. 

Nobody is going to judge you or spend countless hours trying to poke through your "Excusashield". You should be thankful if anybody tried, because nobody owes us a duty to help point out the ways we can improve.

It's a personal battle with excuses. And I have witnessed the effects of being lost in your excuses and walking around with your "Excusashield". After all, we lead our own lives and the fact that I did not achieve as much as I want because I relied on my excuses only serves as a lesson that it'll be the excuses I choose to use that will make or break my life in the future.

5. Excellence is an attitude, not a choice

I wish I knew this better, and not get influenced when people say things like oh it's lame, don't bother with it, you'll do fantastic if you want to. Thinking back on it, I think I got confused between excellence and results. Striving for excellence in everything I do is an attitude. There's no such thing as being able to be 'excellent' at something at your whim and fancy. Just because we occasionally do well in that essay and presentation when we've decided to put in more effort does not equate to being excellent. Maybe it was just pure luck, or it just signals a potential talent in something.

The moment I thought that occasional praise or freakishly good grade meant I was excellent, I was going all the way downhill, not to mention it was also an insult to the spirit of excellence thinking of how little effort I needed to achieve 'it'.

I confused the meaning of excellence and competence for a long time. I now believe that excellence is an attitude to strive to be the best, encapsulating a positive desire to learn, to innovate solutions to get around an obstacle and this makes for a good attitude that can bring you far in life.

Competence however, can be learnt or earned. It can even be force fed to you in school or at work. Sometimes, we may have a innate talent that allows us to acquire it instantaneously. It may not necessarily be the result of constant positive improvements and sometimes, the ease of gaining the competence just clouds our perception of our own abilities. 

If I were to choose, I think striving for excellence will make me a better person in the long run.

6. Not all that glitters is gold.

Money. Grades. Beauty. Popularity. Power.

How many of the above describes what we want?

I have a few of them. They've been great, that's if they don't consume us wholly first.

 7. A man who is critical of everything may just be the biggest fool.

The lesson that I wish the younger me knew. 

For the longest time I've been bred to think that being ability to be critical of everything meant a certain level of intelligence and astute judgement. Interestingly, sometimes when I hear critiques being dished out in life, it feels like we're desperately trying to create this convincing theory that something is bad just because we should and it makes you look smart. It's a Singaporean thing in my opinion, and something I think is making us really unhappy.

A man who is critical of everything, at the end of the day, may just find that nothing is good, nothing is nice, nothing is tasty. I've heard endless complains of bad teachers, bad music, bad food, bad ideas. And it has never been more ironic when people quip about the food they eat, talking about all the other tastier foods elsewhere and at finishing the meal all unsatisfied and cynical. You just missed all the joys (even if it was lesser in comparison), you could have enjoyed from your meal. Now I have no idea why we like to make ourselves so unhappy over lame things like this by being so critical. Perhaps we're the biggest fools ourselves unknowingly.

8.Where you are today is not by chance. Be grateful.

Just a week ago, I found out that Prof. Low was one of the interviewers that sat on the admission panel 6 years back. It was something I have always wanted to find out as I had a phone interview with no means of identifying the panel. I thanked him and I wanted him to know how much it meant to me, for someone on the brink of desperation, having just flunked his A levels and his self worth seriously undermined. Without that chance that was given to me, I may not even be anywhere near where I am today, and the guilt of not being able to live to the best of my abilities because I was immatured and inconsiderate back then in my JC years would have scarred me for life. 

None of us are where we are today by chance. We get to receive a good education, travel the world, excel in our passions and do so many things that billions of other youths never got to. Some of us might like to think it's all our own abilities and effort. I think not. 

We are lucky to have parents who have sacrificed so much to support us in so many ways. They took care of us, set aside time and money they could have used to eat cafe food and club in their discos and splash it all on alcohol. Instead, they taught us, nurtured, gave us the opportunity to learn piano, ballet and whatever we wanted that they never had. How many of us children can truly say we have made the best use of all that they have painstakingly given us?

The same goes for teachers. Having been a teacher of sorts myself, there is nothing more satisfying that seeing a student grow in character and skill. Teachers and professors don't get extra credit or money, or anything truly tangible to gain when they go the extra mile for us students. I had a culture shock when I first entered university when I realised they don't owe us anything at all. I could be where I am today because of so many wonderful teachers that believed that I would be someone good when I was just being a rebellious loser back then.

The last is your friends. The ones who enriched your minds, provided laughter and love along your side. This includes girlfriends/boyfriends, whatever. I couldn't have found myself without them, and it's amazing how selfless and accommodating they have been.

It's so much easier to be a better person when I learnt to live in gratitude, something I wish I understood earlier on.

And.... That's it! 

Sorry for such a long winded post. Maybe graduation turns me into a sentimental nag.

The next post onward, I'm going to be going back to my tech blog roots!