The DSA Camp: A Follow Up

My post is going to come a bit late after all the information previously provided about the DSA camps. I'm not going to talk about the speciifcs of the camp since those will inevitably vary from year to year. As much as the idea of organizing a camp is to observe how prospective students fare in a real environment, there will always be ways and means to prepare, to further prepare, to mug as a form of preparation and to extensively prepare for any and all circumstances that come up.

I want to talk about something you can't prepare for - Six years of life at NUS High School

I've been involved in every DSA camp till now apart from my own. As far as I've seen, every student who attends the DSA camp has one thing in mind, and that is to show the people who make the decisions that they're capable, that they belong in NUS High School for one reason or another. But I'll also like to think that there's a reason why existing students are involved in the running of the camp. In my time, every student helper that takes a group is given an extensive list of criteria, per activity, per participant, to grade and complete. The teachers and staff of NUS High School could well do the grading, but the students do it. Of course, this is only one component of the entire DSA experience - but the question is:

Why?

As a student I daresay I know what it's like to live the NUS High School life. I know the demands of and on a student in this school; I interact with my friends, and the rest of my cohort, and I can mix with them. So when we look at the criteria and we look at a prospective student, we are in the best position to decide if this person will do well and will enjoy him/herself in NUS High School. Of course, I may also be overanalyzing things.

You can, of course, prepare for this assessment by faking your way through, by being more active than you usually would be, by trying really hard to do things you normally would not do and so on. But before you do that, think for a moment if you want to keep the act up for six years.

The key to the DSA camp, beyond all that preparation, is to be yourself. Perhaps as the years go by the things that the DSA camp look out for will be different, perhaps there will be other forms of assessment, perhaps the entire scheme might change; but at the end of the day if you want to enjoy your high school life, be yourself.