Post-APs for a year 6

Hello everybody!

I really love those posts where seniors who went to college talk (collegetalk!) about their personal experience e.g. credit/debit in US, PE classes in Mudd, professors in Stanford. Seniors please keep them coming! Thanks!

From my side, I took part in three interesting activities after our exams and received three miserable tags from them. Nah just kidding. The tags were cool.. Check them out as we go along this post!


Badge #1: SIMC (Singapore International Mathematics Competition) Student Reporter

Yay my editor must be so proud to see me writing about this! K I was assigned to write a couple of articles for SIMC. I really had a blast! I got to run around with the participants as they toured Little India. Plus I "kapo-ed" A LOT about other people. I have never been so thick-skinned in my life but I guess becoming thick-skinned is, to some extent, an important life lesson ;) For example, it's important when you ask for internships, recommendation letters etc..


Badge #2: Delegate at a Congress of Tropical Medicine and Parasitology

My friend and I volunteered to take part in this when it was offered to a group of students who are interested in Biology (Einstein+ for Biology). This was my first professional congress so I was quite nervous about having to turn up in "lounge suit" (please, don't go for these kinda things in your school uniform; smart casual seemed ok for this congress).

The congress took place at a town club. Lotsa good food!! :P Professionals (e.g. virologists, entomologists) were around so my friend and I spoke to some of them during the plentiful tea breaks and lunch breaks. It's a really good opportunity to meet with such people so we asked them about their research, talked about the presentations for the day, and chatted about their culture. There are some presentations that we really don't understand, so we zoned out during some parts. But overall, I understood so many more tropical diseases. We're gonna share more with the Einstein+ (Biology) people but you can ask me if you see me around.

Now, if anybody out there gets to attend a congress, really try your best to understand the field more.



Badge #3: Student Presenter at ISPE Singapore Conference

Again, something I volunteered for. I was representing my research project group at the Student Poster Competition. Mind you, "student" means: highschool (2 juniors and me), poly grads, undergrads, PhD student. I was like :S before the judging. I didn't script my presentation but I did know my project pretty well. Surprisingly, I honestly enjoyed the judging. It was like presenting in a classroom to my teacher because the setting wasn't very formal and the judges spoke to us casually during lunch (we didn't know they were our judges then).

The fun-nest part came after I received a phone call to say that I have been short-listed into the Top 5 finalists. It was sooo unexpected. That meant that I got to go for a welcome dinner at Pan Pacific! So, having coincidentally met before receiving our results, four of us finalists sat down together and chatted the hours away until our welcome dinner. We warmed up to each other so much during those hours that someone at the welcome dinner even thought we came from the same school!

And the dinner? I'm sorry I can't explain what we were eating. It was something like:
1. Salmon with birds' nest + nice grasses with a nice sauce
2. Clam chowder
3. Smoked chicken breast, asparagus on pistachio mashed potato (the menu said it was pistachio), strange red preserved vegetable
4. Parfait with strawberry, blueberry and raspberry
Ok, to sum it up, delicious!

The winner of this competition (a really nice guy from NTU) got to go to Orlando, Florida, US for an ISPE international conference. Junior from our school got 2nd! Woohoo woohoo! PhD student got 3rd. Then a Ngee Ann Poly graduate then.. me!

Really lah, results don't matter. What I took away: meeting beautiful (character lah; what are you thinking?), intelligent people.