There will always be issues in hall. I just thought I'd write them down and condense my opinions in one place. And like before, I will try my best not to generalize other people's opinions, using mainly facts or my own thoughts, because I think it's unfair not just to those I'm slandering but also to the ones I agree with.
I want to make it a 6-part series. No real reason on why the number 6. But so far, what I have in mind is something like this.
Part 1: Orientation (Done)
Part 2: Juggling Commitments and Time Management
Part 3: Leadership
Part 4: JCRC
Part 5: Undecided
Part 6: Undecided
I actually had a really good idea on what to write for the final part, but I forgot. Sorry. Anyway, it should look something like this.
Which reminds me, I have laundry to wash.
~~~
So right now is the CCA selection phase, as freshies are pulled here and there towards activities they themselves have no idea if they are interested yet. It's an annual cycle that parks itself right before serious lessons or assignments start so freshmen never really have a good handle on their craziness of their schedule until after the fact. And this is compounded by the fact that they actually have not started on their tutorials yet, giving them another false sense of "hey, I got this..."
Regardless of how much they think they got this, captains and chairpersons area always advised to select and retain more members that they think is necessary, because inevitably, the number starts to taper off once everyone gets into their midterms. I assume everyone reading this will understand why.
So why am I talking about this? Actually I don't believe there is anything wrong with this. It's just the way the world works today. If you find that this way of doing things is not right for you, you find another way of doing it. Some people truly do end up dropping out of their hall life because they cannot cope with so many commitments. But yet, if we really look deep and ask ourselves if we Can't do it, or we don't Want to do it, what answer do you expect to get? Then we go another level and ask, why is it that all these people around me and countless before have managed to juggle hall and school and remain excelling at both?
Juggling multiple commitments is not easy. You are constantly pulled in different directions by different factors. Why put yourself through this much angst of ANOTHER time-consuming activity. We do it because we enjoy being there. We enjoy the activities that we joined. At least, that's what it's like for me. There's nothing wrong with trying something out and realising it's not the right fit for you. I didn't find my 3 favourite CCAs on my first try. Neither did most of my peers. But what's important is that you give it a sincere try. It's meaningless to put your name to something that you aren't really interested in. There's no point joining 7 CCAs and attending less than half for each. There's no point signing up and saying you have no time. You will never ever have enough time for anything if you have that attitude. All of us struggle to find our own ways of juggling, but why did we put in that effort in the first place? Different people have different reasons. Some will say they want to test themselves. Others will say they want to accompany friends. At the end of the day, whatever reason they have for putting themselves through this, it was worth it to them.
And if you ever want to pull through and juggle hall alongside your many other commitments, you also need to find a reason that's worth it to you.
~~~
Never believe anyone for a minute that they have "no time". "No time" is the ultimate excuse right behind "I want to focus on my studies". I believe people are very simple. They will always be able to make time for the things they want to do.
Let me make a very simple analogy that everyone can relate to. Suppose you come back after a long, hard day. You're tired. You're hungry. You're probably also in need of a shower. Which one do you satisfy first? Sleep, Food or Bath? Everyone has a different priority. Sometimes, even the same person may do something different due to the circumstances. Sometimes, you may even end up not doing one of the 3 at all. Everyone has experienced one of those days where you end up so deadbeat tired you can literally sleep on the floor, even if you're hungry or dirty. And here's the kicker, even the super clean freaks do this as well. Those that cannot go without a shower, also have had days where they just crash somewhere without cleaning themselves. That's because in that moment, priority goes to sleep more so than his own neuroses. Everything boils down to priorities. Everyone can put aside certain things if they really want something. In this case, it happened to be sleep. It doesn't make him any less of a clean freak. It's just the circumstance.
So coming back to hall and commitments. I'm not making the argument here that people don't study or they don't prioritise academia. But what I am saying is that it's always possible to put those things to one side. And I'm not just pointing to books as a culprit. Sometimes people will say they need to go out with their girlfriends or friends or even another competing CCA. To me, life is really about how much you want to be present for. And I prioritise my life with that in the center. Eventually, if you miss out on something regularly enough, people will just assume you won't show up. By then, it wouldn't even matter if you had the right intentions.
Never believe someone who says he has no time until he starts sleeping less than 2 hours a day. I have been in that position and I was still able to find time for my friend's birthday BBQ. Would I do it for everyone I knew? Heck no. But some people are important enough for me to take out 4 hours of my time during a critical school period. Some people are worth it. Some things are worth it. Ultimately you have to be the judge and decide whether this moment is worth losing some sleep or study time over. Sleep is not precious. I can always sleep more some other day. But if I miss this moment, will I get another chance?
~~~
Knowing this means that you have to come to terms with the fact that people just aren't interested in what you want them to do. To deal with this, there are 2 approaches, make the environment worth that guy re-prioritizing or get rid of them. I regularly take the latter approach if I find someone not worth my time, even if it is at the expense of a higher workload. Because I feel the effort expended to woo him is simply not worth it.
As for me, I made it a point to be present for every RHOC meeting, event or activity. Because I knew it was important that I can and will do anything alongside my RHOCers. I made it a point to attend as many softball trainings as I could because I knew that I wanted to be good enough to play on the team based on my own merit. I made it a point to finish my Phoenix Press assignments on time, because it was something my friend truly believed in, and since my initial impetus is to help her; it only made sense to help her all the way. And last but not least, I made it a point to say yes every time a friend asked me out for an outing, because I knew whatever else I might have been doing instead will always be less meaningful than spending time with my friends.
School doesn't make any demands on my time, Because at the end of the day, I'm not going to remember the super helpful lecture or the amazing grades I got. All school does is make requests of my time, and I say yes pending my other commitments.
I want to end off by saying this. Figure out what you truly want to do with your life. Figure out what's worth sacrificing for. This post is not meant to teach you how to juggle hall and school. If hall is really not what you want to do with your time here, my sincerest suggestion is to find something worth spending your time on. Hall is simple another avenue for people to get together and do things. If you're not interested in that, then don't force yourself into loving it.
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Saturday, August 15, 2015
Hall Thoughts: Part 1 (Orientation)
Seeing as I have a little off time now, and the fact that I need to brush up on my writing for a bit, I thought I would take a shot at writing about some of the issues going on in hall.
It would seem appropriate to say here that I will try to avoid over-generalizing opinions of other people. I will mainly use either logic or my own personal opinion without trying to represent anyone else. I think that's fair for everyone when inevitably someone rages, they have someone to direct it towards.
Also, I'm waiting for my laundry to dry.
~~~
Let's start with my favourite topic! Orientation!
So by now I assume a good number of people have heard about our decision to disband RHOC. By that I mean, we will not be continuing our legacy that has lasted at least a good 20 years, and we will not be, as much as I can help it, interfering or advising the new batch of orientation committees.
There are a number of reasons for this, and people have started to question myself or my members about it. Most of them start with "Eh why nobody want to do RHOC anymore? You all cannot find successor ar?" I wish it was as simple as finding a successor.
To fully understand why, we have to backtrack way way back. All the way back to when RHOC lasted 3 weeks. I cannot imagine a RHOC that lasts 3 weeks. Neither can any of my contemporaries. But from what I understand, RHOC is this huge entity of fear, excitement, fun and mostly reactionary movement from clueless freshmen that stretches even into the school time. This RHOC would have incredible things, from typical orientation games, to an insane Cozy Bedroom tunnel constructed our of Comm Hall tables that stretched from our front porch to where T-lab is now, to a phoenix explosion so loud people once called Clementi Police to come down to investigate, to a Sentosa day that lasted from morning til the next day, to Block Orientation that actually made the freshies slide down the slope in every block, to IBG that actually had some competitiveness. What we have today, is simply a watered down version. Many of my predecessors could only dream of doing something as massive as this.
And most amazingly of all, it was planned within a 3 month period when exams end in May til end July.
With that, I come to the first reason for ending RHOC; because it will always remain a sliver of what is an actually impressive package. When we RHOCers start planning, we always ask ourselves and our incoming committee members whether they want to maintain the traditional activities. Invariably we will say yes, because we look back at our seniors and marvel at the great job they have done and wonder if we will ever reach that same greatness. We have set our expectations based on the successes of the past and naturally, want to emulate that same success, either through direct imitation or through capturing the essence of the activity or the camp. The fundamental problem with that it's impossible for us to go back to "the good old days", because today's safety restrictions and expectations are much greater than they were before. It's easy to point the finger at OSA or even SCRC and accuse them of clamping down too harshly on the camp planners, but it turns out that this problem is simply a symptom of perceptions throughout the nation. Sentosa has banned both (unofficial) overnight stays as well as burning of campfires or BBQs. Parents are calling into Hall Office before the camp even begins. This is not the same world our seniors lived in 20 years ago. We couldn't get away with things even if we wanted to.
I do not see a future where the circumstances around RHOC start moving in the opposite direction, where we are encouraged or at least supported to go to the extent that our seniors did. I can only see our activities become more and more restricted. Since we place such a huge importance on continuity and legacy, it is only inevitable that RHOC becomes more and more watered down. This is perhaps one of the reasons why we always seem one step behind other faculty camps, or even RHEX in terms of genuinely fun activities, because we are tied down by both our and the hall residents' expectations of us to remain a "legacy", a legacy that they did not know have been eroding and eroding ever since an administrator first started paying attention to hall camps.
On a similar topic, we move on to reason number 2, the new generation of campers. The RHOC that we know today is based around the "1990s freshmen". They had different tastes, different preferences and most importantly different levels of tolerances. At that time, it wasn't unusual to see freshmen in actual confusion and frustration but yet still go through with something forced upon them. Pain was a powerful way of bonding people. I understood that very clearly when I was still wearing an NPCC uniform. It's sad to say but today's kids aren't like that. They have been pampered by parents throughout a good part of their lives and do not simply accept that they have to go through group suffering, choosing instead to just walk away. Last year, we had this "revolution" incident during the Big Ball Game, where some freshmen actually demanded their rights to not be treated terribly and wanted to just walk away. This year, I was so afraid of that happening en masse that I actually stationed more seniors at the ground floor and prepped them to "counsel" and reduce damage.
This may seem like a small problem, but its sinisterness lies in its deception. For every one such case where walking away is brought to our attention, regardless of how dramatic it was, 5 of them slip under our radar. Like most, I was never aware of the fact that so many people were walking away. It is only during my time as chairperson, that this really hit me right smack in the face. With PDPA seriously enforced this year, we had to directly collect information from freshmen, and it became starkly obvious that there was a serious number of people who were not even going to give the camp a chance, outrightly telling us that they are checking into hall but not attending the camp. And that is even before the camp has started! As camp coordinators, we can only focus our attention and actions on whoever is present, and if they are not present, we totally cannot do anything about it.
What I suspect is that future generations of freshmen will be less tolerant to the type of camp that we run. We are not as friendly, as approachable, or as "entry-level" as other camps. I think anyone who has attended RHOC understands that there is a level of strictness precisely because of the legacy that it carries. The trend that we have witnessed is that more and more freshmen are unwilling to put themselves through this, and more freshmen are willing to walk away back to their rooms, while the camp is happening right outside their rooms, if they find it unsatisfactory. This was an unimaginable circumstance to RHOCers 20 years ago, but this is something we constantly see today.
There will be some out there who will ask us to tone it down to cater to this ever- growing group. My problem is that this is already toned down and yet freshies are leaving before they ever reach the end. There is only so much I can do in this aspect of the camp because we have been here too long already. Our seniors have done too good a job to teaching us to think this way. I no longer know how to do a Big Ball Game that doesn't involve tekkaning people. In fact, I cannot even imagine someone less fierce conducting it. That is the extent to which I am , as Dr. Ho will put it, "in love with the plan." The way RHOC was set up and how it developed over the years has made it into this form that all of us have experienced. Whether as RHOCers, we like it or not, is irrelevant. But to fail to capture that essence is to do it injustice, at least for those of us who have understood the message that the seniors have passed down. I am both unwilling and unable to change RHOC into a form that can cater to this new generation of freshmen, the ones that run at the first sign of pain. And I know that this is a growing population, which will become larger as the years go by. It is simply a sign of the times. We must accept that. Everyone of us in the meeting room were asked to imagine a form of the Big Ball Game that doesn't alienate this group. None of us could do it. That is why I believe disbanding RHOC and setting up a new orientation programme from scratch is the ideal way to go, with as little assistance from present RHOCers as possible.
And then there are the problems that we never found a fix for. One thing that I don't suspect will change in our favour, at least in the next 5 years, is the hall vs faculty competition. There has been a constant competition for freshmen attention between these 2 groups ever since I stepped into hall. At least from what I observe, faculty events are either getting a lot more support, or way less oversight, because both the scale and the engagement is getting more and more ridiculous. There are fundamentally elements that act in their favour, most importantly, the prime timing of their FOPs as well as the undivided attention they get, seeing as there is no competition from outside bodies. Halls cannot act as early because the dates never come in soon enough. Students must always accept their course of choosing before they even think about coming into hall. And with that, there is a good solid month or 2 of attention on them. Furthermore, all their camps require applications, which means the interested campers self-select and get surrounded by other interested campers, creating a false impression that their entire faculty is filled with such people. Contrast that with the forced nature of hall and the cramped schedule of our orientation and its easy to see why the appeal of faculty is so strong. And with the problems I already mentioned above, the differences become even starker. I have contemplated this problem with RHOCers over the years and often we simply see it as another limitation that RHOC must endure. With OSA clamping down harder and harder on hall camps, not just ours, but other halls as well, along with seemingly little interference for the faculty ones, it just seems like a losing battle. I once joked that for a faculty camp, you can have zero programmes but enough OGLs and freshmen and everyone will still consider it a success. The success of a faculty has no dependence on neither the excellence of the execution or the competency of its coordinators. They literally, in all sense of the word, just need to get their freshmen and seniors to show up.
All these are things that are inevitable, and if we choose to force our way through, we will only prolong the inevitable. On the other hand, we can start to fix things that we can fix now. We have real problems in the hall right now. We can try to fix them.
For FOPs, meaning RHEX and RHOC, we have quite a lot of oversight from the SCRC. At least from my perspective, there is a serious disagreement between our agenda and what method we believe is the best way to achieve it. I think we want different things and when that becomes contested, people become frustrated. Take the never-ending angst fest that is RHEX. Nothing puts it quite into perspective as having 4 consecutive RHEX heads telling their successors that same thing; the job is not worth it. The SCRC has its own pressures from upper management. We understand that. But at the same time, we want to feel like our management has our back, that it's willing to support and guide us when they see the conviction we have in what we do. Now, we see a lot of shutting down and shrinking away instead.
I'm a pessimist. I don't assume things will turn out better just because I want it to. I see 2 options to end this conflict. Either the SCRC changes its perspective, which none of us believe will happen to a degree that we are satisfied with, or we change our perspective. I believe if you install a new group of people to run orientation, you will attract a new breed of people. Since this group of coordinators are new, they are more open to influence, and since this is a key event for hall, the SCRC will most likely have a hand in ensuring that this runs smoothly. If the influence from the SCRC is there, it is possible that the camp they run attracts the kind of people who agree with SCRC, because that's the nature of the camp. Take RHEX for an example, RHEX will always draw in people who like RHEX, and people who don't like RHEX either will get turned off and don't apply, or they will still apply and end up finding something they like about hall. This cycle repeats itself and it's not inconceivable that you attract people who have similar tastes. I think the same thing can be done regarding SCRC. The timing just takes more time to adjust because there is still a resistance to them present in hall.
So these are all the external reasons. There are also some internal ones. RHOC has a very serious demand on students' time. Everyone who has been through RHOC has had to sacrifice. They have had to sacrifice their vacation time and more importantly, they have had to sacrifice time making friends with freshies during the most optimum time. The demands on an undergraduate's time is getting greater and greater. Summer school, internship, IA, SEP, NOC, community projects, etc. The list goes on and on. I cannot bring myself to "coerce" somebody to carry on doing RHOC because at the end of the day, RHOC is just a camp. It's just a camp for 200-odd people who had so much fun with each other they won't remember what you gave up for them. I can't bring myself to make them give up the things that really matter for something as insignificant as a camp.
All I can do is present the options and let them decide themselves. Sometimes I even advise them to drop RHOC, because they would be sacrificing too much. I have already seen when students cannot juggle, and often they make the choice and have to live with it. I am proud that I come from a line of people who has kept up this legacy. I am proud of the people who have made this sacrifice alongside me. But at the same time, I can't help but wish my juniors didn't have to. That they could have had the time to spend making friends with freshmen. Because that's what I wanted.
In short, I hope you understand why we chose to disband. Do not reduce our rationales into "cuz nobody want to do lor" I think that's is really disrespectful of the agony we went through to make this decision. We really do hope for a better future. We gave up our chance to do it next year, so that others may do it better. This is a new opportunity for the hall. Maybe you can succeed where we have failed. Good luck.
It would seem appropriate to say here that I will try to avoid over-generalizing opinions of other people. I will mainly use either logic or my own personal opinion without trying to represent anyone else. I think that's fair for everyone when inevitably someone rages, they have someone to direct it towards.
Also, I'm waiting for my laundry to dry.
~~~
Let's start with my favourite topic! Orientation!
So by now I assume a good number of people have heard about our decision to disband RHOC. By that I mean, we will not be continuing our legacy that has lasted at least a good 20 years, and we will not be, as much as I can help it, interfering or advising the new batch of orientation committees.
There are a number of reasons for this, and people have started to question myself or my members about it. Most of them start with "Eh why nobody want to do RHOC anymore? You all cannot find successor ar?"
To fully understand why, we have to backtrack way way back. All the way back to when RHOC lasted 3 weeks. I cannot imagine a RHOC that lasts 3 weeks. Neither can any of my contemporaries. But from what I understand, RHOC is this huge entity of fear, excitement, fun and mostly reactionary movement from clueless freshmen that stretches even into the school time. This RHOC would have incredible things, from typical orientation games, to an insane Cozy Bedroom tunnel constructed our of Comm Hall tables that stretched from our front porch to where T-lab is now, to a phoenix explosion so loud people once called Clementi Police to come down to investigate, to a Sentosa day that lasted from morning til the next day, to Block Orientation that actually made the freshies slide down the slope in every block, to IBG that actually had some competitiveness. What we have today, is simply a watered down version. Many of my predecessors could only dream of doing something as massive as this.
And most amazingly of all, it was planned within a 3 month period when exams end in May til end July.
With that, I come to the first reason for ending RHOC; because it will always remain a sliver of what is an actually impressive package. When we RHOCers start planning, we always ask ourselves and our incoming committee members whether they want to maintain the traditional activities. Invariably we will say yes, because we look back at our seniors and marvel at the great job they have done and wonder if we will ever reach that same greatness. We have set our expectations based on the successes of the past and naturally, want to emulate that same success, either through direct imitation or through capturing the essence of the activity or the camp. The fundamental problem with that it's impossible for us to go back to "the good old days", because today's safety restrictions and expectations are much greater than they were before. It's easy to point the finger at OSA or even SCRC and accuse them of clamping down too harshly on the camp planners, but it turns out that this problem is simply a symptom of perceptions throughout the nation. Sentosa has banned both (unofficial) overnight stays as well as burning of campfires or BBQs. Parents are calling into Hall Office before the camp even begins. This is not the same world our seniors lived in 20 years ago. We couldn't get away with things even if we wanted to.
I do not see a future where the circumstances around RHOC start moving in the opposite direction, where we are encouraged or at least supported to go to the extent that our seniors did. I can only see our activities become more and more restricted. Since we place such a huge importance on continuity and legacy, it is only inevitable that RHOC becomes more and more watered down. This is perhaps one of the reasons why we always seem one step behind other faculty camps, or even RHEX in terms of genuinely fun activities, because we are tied down by both our and the hall residents' expectations of us to remain a "legacy", a legacy that they did not know have been eroding and eroding ever since an administrator first started paying attention to hall camps.
On a similar topic, we move on to reason number 2, the new generation of campers. The RHOC that we know today is based around the "1990s freshmen". They had different tastes, different preferences and most importantly different levels of tolerances. At that time, it wasn't unusual to see freshmen in actual confusion and frustration but yet still go through with something forced upon them. Pain was a powerful way of bonding people. I understood that very clearly when I was still wearing an NPCC uniform. It's sad to say but today's kids aren't like that. They have been pampered by parents throughout a good part of their lives and do not simply accept that they have to go through group suffering, choosing instead to just walk away. Last year, we had this "revolution" incident during the Big Ball Game, where some freshmen actually demanded their rights to not be treated terribly and wanted to just walk away. This year, I was so afraid of that happening en masse that I actually stationed more seniors at the ground floor and prepped them to "counsel" and reduce damage.
This may seem like a small problem, but its sinisterness lies in its deception. For every one such case where walking away is brought to our attention, regardless of how dramatic it was, 5 of them slip under our radar. Like most, I was never aware of the fact that so many people were walking away. It is only during my time as chairperson, that this really hit me right smack in the face. With PDPA seriously enforced this year, we had to directly collect information from freshmen, and it became starkly obvious that there was a serious number of people who were not even going to give the camp a chance, outrightly telling us that they are checking into hall but not attending the camp. And that is even before the camp has started! As camp coordinators, we can only focus our attention and actions on whoever is present, and if they are not present, we totally cannot do anything about it.
What I suspect is that future generations of freshmen will be less tolerant to the type of camp that we run. We are not as friendly, as approachable, or as "entry-level" as other camps. I think anyone who has attended RHOC understands that there is a level of strictness precisely because of the legacy that it carries. The trend that we have witnessed is that more and more freshmen are unwilling to put themselves through this, and more freshmen are willing to walk away back to their rooms, while the camp is happening right outside their rooms, if they find it unsatisfactory. This was an unimaginable circumstance to RHOCers 20 years ago, but this is something we constantly see today.
There will be some out there who will ask us to tone it down to cater to this ever- growing group. My problem is that this is already toned down and yet freshies are leaving before they ever reach the end. There is only so much I can do in this aspect of the camp because we have been here too long already. Our seniors have done too good a job to teaching us to think this way. I no longer know how to do a Big Ball Game that doesn't involve tekkaning people. In fact, I cannot even imagine someone less fierce conducting it. That is the extent to which I am , as Dr. Ho will put it, "in love with the plan." The way RHOC was set up and how it developed over the years has made it into this form that all of us have experienced. Whether as RHOCers, we like it or not, is irrelevant. But to fail to capture that essence is to do it injustice, at least for those of us who have understood the message that the seniors have passed down. I am both unwilling and unable to change RHOC into a form that can cater to this new generation of freshmen, the ones that run at the first sign of pain. And I know that this is a growing population, which will become larger as the years go by. It is simply a sign of the times. We must accept that. Everyone of us in the meeting room were asked to imagine a form of the Big Ball Game that doesn't alienate this group. None of us could do it. That is why I believe disbanding RHOC and setting up a new orientation programme from scratch is the ideal way to go, with as little assistance from present RHOCers as possible.
And then there are the problems that we never found a fix for. One thing that I don't suspect will change in our favour, at least in the next 5 years, is the hall vs faculty competition. There has been a constant competition for freshmen attention between these 2 groups ever since I stepped into hall. At least from what I observe, faculty events are either getting a lot more support, or way less oversight, because both the scale and the engagement is getting more and more ridiculous. There are fundamentally elements that act in their favour, most importantly, the prime timing of their FOPs as well as the undivided attention they get, seeing as there is no competition from outside bodies. Halls cannot act as early because the dates never come in soon enough. Students must always accept their course of choosing before they even think about coming into hall. And with that, there is a good solid month or 2 of attention on them. Furthermore, all their camps require applications, which means the interested campers self-select and get surrounded by other interested campers, creating a false impression that their entire faculty is filled with such people. Contrast that with the forced nature of hall and the cramped schedule of our orientation and its easy to see why the appeal of faculty is so strong. And with the problems I already mentioned above, the differences become even starker. I have contemplated this problem with RHOCers over the years and often we simply see it as another limitation that RHOC must endure. With OSA clamping down harder and harder on hall camps, not just ours, but other halls as well, along with seemingly little interference for the faculty ones, it just seems like a losing battle. I once joked that for a faculty camp, you can have zero programmes but enough OGLs and freshmen and everyone will still consider it a success. The success of a faculty has no dependence on neither the excellence of the execution or the competency of its coordinators. They literally, in all sense of the word, just need to get their freshmen and seniors to show up.
All these are things that are inevitable, and if we choose to force our way through, we will only prolong the inevitable. On the other hand, we can start to fix things that we can fix now. We have real problems in the hall right now. We can try to fix them.
For FOPs, meaning RHEX and RHOC, we have quite a lot of oversight from the SCRC. At least from my perspective, there is a serious disagreement between our agenda and what method we believe is the best way to achieve it. I think we want different things and when that becomes contested, people become frustrated. Take the never-ending angst fest that is RHEX. Nothing puts it quite into perspective as having 4 consecutive RHEX heads telling their successors that same thing; the job is not worth it. The SCRC has its own pressures from upper management. We understand that. But at the same time, we want to feel like our management has our back, that it's willing to support and guide us when they see the conviction we have in what we do. Now, we see a lot of shutting down and shrinking away instead.
I'm a pessimist. I don't assume things will turn out better just because I want it to. I see 2 options to end this conflict. Either the SCRC changes its perspective, which none of us believe will happen to a degree that we are satisfied with, or we change our perspective. I believe if you install a new group of people to run orientation, you will attract a new breed of people. Since this group of coordinators are new, they are more open to influence, and since this is a key event for hall, the SCRC will most likely have a hand in ensuring that this runs smoothly. If the influence from the SCRC is there, it is possible that the camp they run attracts the kind of people who agree with SCRC, because that's the nature of the camp. Take RHEX for an example, RHEX will always draw in people who like RHEX, and people who don't like RHEX either will get turned off and don't apply, or they will still apply and end up finding something they like about hall. This cycle repeats itself and it's not inconceivable that you attract people who have similar tastes. I think the same thing can be done regarding SCRC. The timing just takes more time to adjust because there is still a resistance to them present in hall.
So these are all the external reasons. There are also some internal ones. RHOC has a very serious demand on students' time. Everyone who has been through RHOC has had to sacrifice. They have had to sacrifice their vacation time and more importantly, they have had to sacrifice time making friends with freshies during the most optimum time. The demands on an undergraduate's time is getting greater and greater. Summer school, internship, IA, SEP, NOC, community projects, etc. The list goes on and on. I cannot bring myself to "coerce" somebody to carry on doing RHOC because at the end of the day, RHOC is just a camp. It's just a camp for 200-odd people who had so much fun with each other they won't remember what you gave up for them. I can't bring myself to make them give up the things that really matter for something as insignificant as a camp.
All I can do is present the options and let them decide themselves. Sometimes I even advise them to drop RHOC, because they would be sacrificing too much. I have already seen when students cannot juggle, and often they make the choice and have to live with it. I am proud that I come from a line of people who has kept up this legacy. I am proud of the people who have made this sacrifice alongside me. But at the same time, I can't help but wish my juniors didn't have to. That they could have had the time to spend making friends with freshmen. Because that's what I wanted.
In short, I hope you understand why we chose to disband. Do not reduce our rationales into "cuz nobody want to do lor" I think that's is really disrespectful of the agony we went through to make this decision. We really do hope for a better future. We gave up our chance to do it next year, so that others may do it better. This is a new opportunity for the hall. Maybe you can succeed where we have failed. Good luck.
Monday, May 25, 2015
4 moaning sessions
4 moaning sessions
~~~
So i had this girl who just dropped out of her tasked job in rhoc. dont worry she didnt go as far as to drop out of everything, thank goodness. but it was still jarring.
it was so jarring in fact i had to screenshot 15 pages of the chat log and send to my friend to help me analyse if i said anything stupid. i didn't. according to him anyway. the closest we got to anything going wrong was the fact that i pushed the fact that my experience was telling her not to do something that she wanted to do. apparently, saying that reminded my friend of when his boss used to "push" him around using experience as the excuse, but even he admits he was in the wrong for feeling like this, regardless of whether the boss was right or wrong.
maybe its a gen-y thing. maybe we've learnt to grow up needing to know the reason behind everything that we cant simply accept something is something because somebody said it is. we have to know why or we'll be mopey, pissed off or unmotivated.
~~~
i dont think i have even learnt the basics of how to communicate with people in nus.
a good while ago, i decided i wasn't going to chase after nus girls anymore. this came after i stopped focusing on one particular girl (i.e. she rejected me) and started focusing on everyone. it turns out i dont click well with anyone in this rung of society. i always say something stupid and the people here cant seem to brush it off and accept that someone as stupid as myself is breathing the same air as them. or i always say something hurtful and people here will hold it against me every time they have to utter a word in my presence. maybe i shouldn't say anything at all.
im used to being the underdog, surrounded by other underdogs, where success is not guaranteed, and if you get it, you are the fortunate one out of 100. but that doesn't matter to the underdogs, because they will still cheer you on, knowing that one of them is now going further than anyone ever expected, and be genuinely happy about it. not very different from how you cheer when your countrymen won a medal, even though you don't have any connection to it at all.
i dont belong in nus. she doesn't seem to agree with what i want to do.
i want to step down the ladder a few steps and hang out with people there. who are hopefully more like me than i care to admit, and click on a more basic level. i hope this is not a the grass is always greener on the other side scenario.
i stretched too far to get into nus anyway. i dont belong here.
i dont like the value system here. you are nothing if you have no value to someone else. it works like this in hall. it works like this in school. it works like this in administration. your opinion doesnt matter if you are not important to someone somewhere. you dont matter if you have no value.
i dont like people not being recognized or respected for the work they put in. when you get high enough and all responsibilities and tasks and titles and ranks seem to blend into one crazy mix, its easy to forget to acknowledge those that made your life easier. we have expectations of people but we never celebrate them, however horrid or fantastic of a job they did. we don't. we don't vilify the terrible leaders nor do we celebrate the good ones. we just let them go through the revolving door and watch another helpless sap realize what he's gotten himself into.
and people also regularly forget that the people under them need their support. they need to know that people appreciate their work. because this is not a job. there has never been an obligation to do this. i'm putting my free time to use here because i believe in something worthwhile, something greater than myself. and then you treat me like i'm just another worker here to get the job done and go home. for what? i don't even get to bring any bacon home, why should i do a job for you? we've forgotten what it means to aspire to something greater, and maybe, just maybe, we've lost a bit of humanity.
i guess i just dont like being here.
~~~
making mistakes is fine. whats complicated is knowing in advance someone under your charge will make a mistake, and letting them do it anyway.
this has happened a few times already over the past year. and i never know how to handle it. and i don't really have anyone to talk to because everyone here is a jerk and i hate them.
so it's strange watching a tragedy unfold exactly as how you've predicted it. and i guess i do have some responsibility in preventing such tragedies in the first place. but how far do you go? do you just dictate anything and everything that needs to be done? that's the role of a salaryman. that's not why i took this responsibility.
i have far greater motivations than merely dictating instructions to robots
~~~
i'm not happy with who or where i am now, but i think i'm comfortable here.
here's the logic behind it. i'm not happy with myself, because of poor self-confidence, bad experiences, whatever. i tell people about it, and inevitably, they will say i need to change who i am. but i will always be so vehemently against change that i even outright lie to them and say i'm happy with who i am now. i never am. so naturally, it leads to the fact that there must be something about the here and the now that i'm unwilling to change. maybe im too afraid of change. maybe i dont want to work myself hard in order to change. maybe i'm just lazy.
i don't like who i am or where i am now. but not enough to try to change.
maybe i'd just rather moan than actually try to become happy.
~~~
~~~
So i had this girl who just dropped out of her tasked job in rhoc. dont worry she didnt go as far as to drop out of everything, thank goodness. but it was still jarring.
it was so jarring in fact i had to screenshot 15 pages of the chat log and send to my friend to help me analyse if i said anything stupid. i didn't. according to him anyway. the closest we got to anything going wrong was the fact that i pushed the fact that my experience was telling her not to do something that she wanted to do. apparently, saying that reminded my friend of when his boss used to "push" him around using experience as the excuse, but even he admits he was in the wrong for feeling like this, regardless of whether the boss was right or wrong.
maybe its a gen-y thing. maybe we've learnt to grow up needing to know the reason behind everything that we cant simply accept something is something because somebody said it is. we have to know why or we'll be mopey, pissed off or unmotivated.
~~~
i dont think i have even learnt the basics of how to communicate with people in nus.
a good while ago, i decided i wasn't going to chase after nus girls anymore. this came after i stopped focusing on one particular girl (i.e. she rejected me) and started focusing on everyone. it turns out i dont click well with anyone in this rung of society. i always say something stupid and the people here cant seem to brush it off and accept that someone as stupid as myself is breathing the same air as them. or i always say something hurtful and people here will hold it against me every time they have to utter a word in my presence. maybe i shouldn't say anything at all.
im used to being the underdog, surrounded by other underdogs, where success is not guaranteed, and if you get it, you are the fortunate one out of 100. but that doesn't matter to the underdogs, because they will still cheer you on, knowing that one of them is now going further than anyone ever expected, and be genuinely happy about it. not very different from how you cheer when your countrymen won a medal, even though you don't have any connection to it at all.
i dont belong in nus. she doesn't seem to agree with what i want to do.
i want to step down the ladder a few steps and hang out with people there. who are hopefully more like me than i care to admit, and click on a more basic level. i hope this is not a the grass is always greener on the other side scenario.
i stretched too far to get into nus anyway. i dont belong here.
i dont like the value system here. you are nothing if you have no value to someone else. it works like this in hall. it works like this in school. it works like this in administration. your opinion doesnt matter if you are not important to someone somewhere. you dont matter if you have no value.
i dont like people not being recognized or respected for the work they put in. when you get high enough and all responsibilities and tasks and titles and ranks seem to blend into one crazy mix, its easy to forget to acknowledge those that made your life easier. we have expectations of people but we never celebrate them, however horrid or fantastic of a job they did. we don't. we don't vilify the terrible leaders nor do we celebrate the good ones. we just let them go through the revolving door and watch another helpless sap realize what he's gotten himself into.
and people also regularly forget that the people under them need their support. they need to know that people appreciate their work. because this is not a job. there has never been an obligation to do this. i'm putting my free time to use here because i believe in something worthwhile, something greater than myself. and then you treat me like i'm just another worker here to get the job done and go home. for what? i don't even get to bring any bacon home, why should i do a job for you? we've forgotten what it means to aspire to something greater, and maybe, just maybe, we've lost a bit of humanity.
i guess i just dont like being here.
~~~
making mistakes is fine. whats complicated is knowing in advance someone under your charge will make a mistake, and letting them do it anyway.
this has happened a few times already over the past year. and i never know how to handle it. and i don't really have anyone to talk to because everyone here is a jerk and i hate them.
so it's strange watching a tragedy unfold exactly as how you've predicted it. and i guess i do have some responsibility in preventing such tragedies in the first place. but how far do you go? do you just dictate anything and everything that needs to be done? that's the role of a salaryman. that's not why i took this responsibility.
i have far greater motivations than merely dictating instructions to robots
~~~
i'm not happy with who or where i am now, but i think i'm comfortable here.
here's the logic behind it. i'm not happy with myself, because of poor self-confidence, bad experiences, whatever. i tell people about it, and inevitably, they will say i need to change who i am. but i will always be so vehemently against change that i even outright lie to them and say i'm happy with who i am now. i never am. so naturally, it leads to the fact that there must be something about the here and the now that i'm unwilling to change. maybe im too afraid of change. maybe i dont want to work myself hard in order to change. maybe i'm just lazy.
i don't like who i am or where i am now. but not enough to try to change.
maybe i'd just rather moan than actually try to become happy.
~~~
Friday, April 17, 2015
"the bigger picture"
When I was in secondary school, my friends in NPCC used to love use the term "brother". like "eh brother" or "yi qi zuo la, wo men shi brother ma" [do it together la, we are brothers]
I've quickly learnt to discard the term from my vocabulary after I left sec 4.
It wasn't because I didn't believe that we were in fact, brothers, so to speak, but because I believed it too much. It became a reminder of that almost betrayal, not something that someone did intentionally, but a sort of social contract that both parties weren't aware of, but somehow he broke it.
I don't use it nowadays, except for people I don't particularly care about, but for some reason need something out of them, like when I need a person-in-charge to close one eye while I use some facility.
I'm in university now, and there's another term I've grown to despise.
"The bigger picture"
There are 2 people I used to respect that use it as a way to justify their actions, but MY own opinion is that if that's your justification, it means you have not done your job as well as you should have. Because that term never comes out as anything other than an excuse, like I was lazy and couldn't be bothered. Except in this case, they did bother but in a way that produced a certain set of problems. My personal problem with this is that it doesn't necessarily come with a solution or even an implicit promise to get a better solution. It's just a way to shut people up. Because I wouldn't even be speaking to you about this if you hadn't overlooked it.
The first time I heard it, it really shattered my confidence. I thought I was in the wrong for thinking that much in detail, like I really shouldn't think that far ahead. But I've since spoke with those more experienced than myself and it seems more and more that for those I've asked anyway, there isn't really such a thing as asking too many questions. Someone at that stage of planning should be aware of all consideration, not just "the bigger picture", and if they've overlooked something, they, themselves, will try to work out a solution alone or with the person who raised the consideration.
So I've felt a bit better after that.
But even after speaking to other uninvolved friends about it, I still have that nagging doubt, because I can never adequately describe that things that I say or the questions that I ask, and they are never around to assess the situation without my biases since I'm explaining the situation to them after the fact.
So yeah, words and stuff.
~~~
As an aside, I've realized that we are most heavily influenced by our first experience with something. Like in RHOC, most of us are shaped by our experiences as secretaries in year 1, as opposed to anything else. And inevitably, most people will think that their year 1 is the best camp that they made happen.
But what interests me is that we seem to have different yardsticks by how we measure the success of each our our own experiences and why it is "justified" to be the best one. For example, I felt that my first year was the best because we managed to do something incredibly large in scale and hasn't been done in 10 years because of the difficulty, scale and actual human danger, but also that my batch were more independent and competent in their own areas to the point where you can trust them to get things done. On the other hand, I spoke with a senior once and she said her year was the best not because of reasons regarding execution or even the campers. She just said that it was the best because they were the most bonded and had the most fun as a group. For me, I would never consider that "success" other than a sort of consolation prize, but she truly believed that that particular bond outweighed whatever camp they actually made.
It's really interesting still though.
I've quickly learnt to discard the term from my vocabulary after I left sec 4.
It wasn't because I didn't believe that we were in fact, brothers, so to speak, but because I believed it too much. It became a reminder of that almost betrayal, not something that someone did intentionally, but a sort of social contract that both parties weren't aware of, but somehow he broke it.
I don't use it nowadays, except for people I don't particularly care about, but for some reason need something out of them, like when I need a person-in-charge to close one eye while I use some facility.
I'm in university now, and there's another term I've grown to despise.
"The bigger picture"
There are 2 people I used to respect that use it as a way to justify their actions, but MY own opinion is that if that's your justification, it means you have not done your job as well as you should have. Because that term never comes out as anything other than an excuse, like I was lazy and couldn't be bothered. Except in this case, they did bother but in a way that produced a certain set of problems. My personal problem with this is that it doesn't necessarily come with a solution or even an implicit promise to get a better solution. It's just a way to shut people up. Because I wouldn't even be speaking to you about this if you hadn't overlooked it.
The first time I heard it, it really shattered my confidence. I thought I was in the wrong for thinking that much in detail, like I really shouldn't think that far ahead. But I've since spoke with those more experienced than myself and it seems more and more that for those I've asked anyway, there isn't really such a thing as asking too many questions. Someone at that stage of planning should be aware of all consideration, not just "the bigger picture", and if they've overlooked something, they, themselves, will try to work out a solution alone or with the person who raised the consideration.
So I've felt a bit better after that.
But even after speaking to other uninvolved friends about it, I still have that nagging doubt, because I can never adequately describe that things that I say or the questions that I ask, and they are never around to assess the situation without my biases since I'm explaining the situation to them after the fact.
So yeah, words and stuff.
~~~
As an aside, I've realized that we are most heavily influenced by our first experience with something. Like in RHOC, most of us are shaped by our experiences as secretaries in year 1, as opposed to anything else. And inevitably, most people will think that their year 1 is the best camp that they made happen.
But what interests me is that we seem to have different yardsticks by how we measure the success of each our our own experiences and why it is "justified" to be the best one. For example, I felt that my first year was the best because we managed to do something incredibly large in scale and hasn't been done in 10 years because of the difficulty, scale and actual human danger, but also that my batch were more independent and competent in their own areas to the point where you can trust them to get things done. On the other hand, I spoke with a senior once and she said her year was the best not because of reasons regarding execution or even the campers. She just said that it was the best because they were the most bonded and had the most fun as a group. For me, I would never consider that "success" other than a sort of consolation prize, but she truly believed that that particular bond outweighed whatever camp they actually made.
It's really interesting still though.
Sunday, January 04, 2015
New Years 2015
I think my writing skills have seriously deteriorated. Anyway, time for new years' resolutions, because why not.
I only have 2 this year. And they don't really involve any real "goals" or milestones like going to the gym or whatever. They are:
1) No (LESS) swearing
2) No sympathy
Number 1 is not as straightforward as it seems. (Actually neither of them are straightforward.) So I've always been a pretty vulgar guy. But now it has come to the vulgarities make up more than half of my casual conversations, which limits the things I actually want to express verbally.
But knowing the type of person I am, I can't really "give up" something so intrinsic to my self-image. Especially since it's already 4th Jan and I've already caught myself slipping much more than I thought I would. I knew this needed to be an interesting thing, or else I would get bored of it very soon. So I came up with a more fun alternative. Instead of not saying the word fuck itself, I would replace it with more kid-friendly swearing, like flip or fish (but not fish because even that sounds too kiddish). Here's the example I find to be the most appropriate.
I find this fun for some odd reason.
Here's the thing I think I need to clarify: I don't find swearing offensive. But I do feel that it has reached a level in my vocabulary where it is starting to replace other actually useful words. Which is why I'm toning it down a notch this year.
NUMBER 2.
This needs a bit of explanation. I have found myself, on multiple occasions, especially this past year, "making myself seem small" in an attempt to get more sympathy points. And it's quite a conscious, yet automatic response I seem to make, especially in school. I would say things like, "eh don't make my job harder leh" or just INTENTIONALLY lower my head and eyes a lot more in an obvious attempt to look weak. There are problems with this, of course. First, that it doesn't even actually work. Maybe one person in like 20+ attempts have come up to ask whether I'm fine, so I know that doesn't work. But more importantly, I apparently became a "senior" at some point and people start to put more weight in what I have to say. I only realized this when I kept making stupid jokes to this junior girl beside me (in the middle of a sort-of "crisis") and during debrief, she said I was being inappropriate and not solving the crisis since I was a senior. I NEVER connected the dots until pretty much 2014, which was weird.
I think that doing all those "shrinking" body language thing is ultimately detrimental, both to the self-image but also to the bigger overall picture. It (the mentality) shirks responsibility away from myself, and starts to seek out "I hope you get better"s and "Good try though"s.
So anyway, here are my 2 resolutions. I don't really know how to measure them.
In other news, I've been watching Wolf Children
I only have 2 this year. And they don't really involve any real "goals" or milestones like going to the gym or whatever. They are:
1) No (LESS) swearing
2) No sympathy
Number 1 is not as straightforward as it seems. (Actually neither of them are straightforward.) So I've always been a pretty vulgar guy. But now it has come to the vulgarities make up more than half of my casual conversations, which limits the things I actually want to express verbally.
But knowing the type of person I am, I can't really "give up" something so intrinsic to my self-image. Especially since it's already 4th Jan and I've already caught myself slipping much more than I thought I would. I knew this needed to be an interesting thing, or else I would get bored of it very soon. So I came up with a more fun alternative. Instead of not saying the word fuck itself, I would replace it with more kid-friendly swearing, like flip or fish (but not fish because even that sounds too kiddish). Here's the example I find to be the most appropriate.
I find this fun for some odd reason.
Here's the thing I think I need to clarify: I don't find swearing offensive. But I do feel that it has reached a level in my vocabulary where it is starting to replace other actually useful words. Which is why I'm toning it down a notch this year.
NUMBER 2.
This needs a bit of explanation. I have found myself, on multiple occasions, especially this past year, "making myself seem small" in an attempt to get more sympathy points. And it's quite a conscious, yet automatic response I seem to make, especially in school. I would say things like, "eh don't make my job harder leh" or just INTENTIONALLY lower my head and eyes a lot more in an obvious attempt to look weak. There are problems with this, of course. First, that it doesn't even actually work. Maybe one person in like 20+ attempts have come up to ask whether I'm fine, so I know that doesn't work. But more importantly, I apparently became a "senior" at some point and people start to put more weight in what I have to say. I only realized this when I kept making stupid jokes to this junior girl beside me (in the middle of a sort-of "crisis") and during debrief, she said I was being inappropriate and not solving the crisis since I was a senior. I NEVER connected the dots until pretty much 2014, which was weird.
I think that doing all those "shrinking" body language thing is ultimately detrimental, both to the self-image but also to the bigger overall picture. It (the mentality) shirks responsibility away from myself, and starts to seek out "I hope you get better"s and "Good try though"s.
So anyway, here are my 2 resolutions. I don't really know how to measure them.
In other news, I've been watching Wolf Children
It's a crying movie that will make you appreciate your mom a lot more. Especially that scene where she's hopping on the spot, struggling to decide whether to visit the doctor or the vet to cure her son who ate some silica gel. It's not a metaphor, the kids really are both wolves and humans. But if you can't get over the fact that she's pretty much super jesus who can do anything, then you probably shouldn't watch this.
Also this,
Summer Wars
It's basically the Digimon Movie (which I have sitting in my hard drive just WAITING to be watched) with a nice sounding female lead. It's entertaining and not very deep, which is kind of like the ultimate summer movie. It's why we watch Avengers anyway.
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