In today’s papers there was an article relating to the new university admission criteria here. SATs are no longer going to be counted for university admission here. Does that mean I wasted my money and time last year sitting for the SAT since I’d choose to go to university here as long as I get in? I was thinking of re-taking it after receiving my results, but now it seems as though there’s not much of a need to…

Being the last week of the month, there was no sunday school today. Instead we had a longer fellowship time, and Ernest planned a game of treasure hunt for all of us. Even though we split into our groups it was still hard to ensure that everyone stayed together as the groups were rather big, and some people just wanted to do their own things. But this is a good experience for all those involved in the planning as well as the group leaders.

Jireh brought a girl to church today, and she’s very pretty. I thought they were classmates or something, but apparently she’s from HC and they met through some school thing. I don’t believe Jireh’s not insterested in her like he claims to be. We all know how guys are… and I’m sure some of the other guys have already taken fancy of her. But she seems a really nice girl. Eunice brought her junior too, and it was only later that I realised she was Heng Tin’s cousin. The world is that small.

I find that on sundays i’m usually busy doing things and discussing stuff with Jireh that sometimes I don’t totally focus on worship. Sometimes I would be thinking about the things that need to be settled and just drift away, which is definately not good. But I really got to enjoy singspiration today, and the songs just touched me in some way. That sort of peace is something I haven’t felt for quite some time. Praise Him.

The “Kopitiam” session today went better than I had expected. The topic was “Streaming – are we widening the divide?”, and some of the points raised provoked much thought. I think it’s more of our perceptions and attitude towards the whole streaming issue that results in the “divide” as we say, rather than the intentions of streaming itself. Of course the way it’s being executed has a part to play in this as well. I think it’s good that MOE is making quite some changes to our education system now, but I hope that more options and a more flexible education can be provided to the students that what is currently being offered.

I think the current JC education is very demanding. With long school hours and a 3-year course being squeezed into 2 years, students spend so much time trying to learn this whole big chunk of information that’s being presented to them. With additional activities such as CCAs and projects, we don’t have much time left for ourselves at all. The competition just makes it worse. To get into the more competitive courses in university, good grades are a must, leading to even more competition among us students, which sometimes translates to more time spent being buried in the books. Too often we do what we should and and what we are expected to do instead of what we want to do or enjoy doing. There’s more to life than just studying, but sadly there are people out there who don’t seem as though they realise it.

Feeling really disappointed at the results right now… Fairfield is a good school, and I don’t see any reason why the whole cohort could have done so badly. Even in the neighbourhood schools there are people who scored 7 A1s and above for the O Levels, but how come our top scorer doesn’t even have 6 points?! It really goes to show how badly the cohort has done… even the A class has an average of around 12. I really don’t know what to say. It’s their results and not mine, but I do care… Somehow it means a lot to me too. I don’t know what happened to their batch. Maybe they already have tried their best; that I don’t know. But this difference in standards is just too big a gap. And it’s not like their batch was much worse than ours when they came in…

I really hope the current batch of sec 4s will not be disheartened after hearing their seniors’ results, but instead be motivated to work harder, aim to do much better, and bring the school rankings up again. Somehow I have this feeling I won’t see fairfield among the top 50 schools this year.

The O Level results are released today. Seeing the nervousness and excitement of the year ones as I stepped into school today just reminded me of this time last year, when my batch was the one that were collecting our results. A year has passed so quickly… I remember stepping into Fairfield, meeting my classmates and waiting below the hall until they told us to go in. How Elaine Lim was talking about our results, and while all the talking was going on the 2 calls from Joshua (who seemed more anxious to know about my results than I was); the smiles and the tears… something I won’t forget so soon.

Quite sad that the junior batch didn’t do well; there’s no fairsian with 7 A1s this year, which is a stark contrast to what my batch achieved last year. I thought that at least the top person would get 7 A1s, but I guess I was really wrong. In that case, when the top person has at most 6 A1s, how many 6 pointers are there, if there are any in the first place? I’m disappointed at the news, but I think the teachers, and the sec 4 batch last year especially, feel even worse. After all, the results are theirs, and it affects their future. I hope that the average score is reasonably high, and most people can get into the schools they want…

Hoping that Amenda feels better as well. If you’re reading this, cheer up ok? Quite happy for Jireh. Though he didn’t do as well as he hoped to, I admire his attitude towards that slight disappointment. But I’m sure he’ll still be able to stay on in RJ, considering that his results are still really good. Have to ask the rest of my juniors how they did later on…