NUSHSCollegeTalk wishes all its readers a Happy Halloween!
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone
http://mrwangsaysso.blogspot.com/2008/08/life-and-how-to-survive-it.html
This is the NTU convocation address given by a lawyer, Adrian Tan.
An excerpt as follows:
I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.
My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.
On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.
Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.
This is the NTU convocation address given by a lawyer, Adrian Tan.
An excerpt as follows:
I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.
My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.
On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.
Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
A very funny article, about physics
It's really funny, and all you physics/non-physics people should check it out.
http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/unpopular-science/?src=me&ref=general
http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/unpopular-science/?src=me&ref=general
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Books for Sale
I'm at the stage in my life where I get to do away with a good number of books I do not foresee myself using in the near future, so I'm offering them up here for grabs should any of our loyal readers want a dig at them
- College Physics (8th ed) by Young and Geller, $30
- Biology, Life on Earth (7th ed) by Audersirk and Byers, $20
- The Practice of Statistics (3rd ed) by Yates et. al, $20
- Precalculus: Graphing, Data and Analysis (3rd ed) by Sullivan and Sullivan, $20
- Basic Technical Mathematics with Calculus Part One (7th ed) by Washington, $15
- Student Solution Manual and Study Guide for Principles of Physics Vol 1 and 2 (4th ed) by Serway and Jewett, $30
- Chemistry, The Central Science (10th ed) by Brown et. al, $30
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Updates
We've got a set of updates for everyone!
1. Swanky new design!
2. We've added a new page on Deadlines, linked to a Google Calendar. Do check that out and begin your applications early! If there's any relevant deadline we missed out, do give us a shoutout in the tagboard.
3. With the whole social media marketing thing going on, we decided to hop onto the bandwagon.
You may now follow us on twitter. (Look to your right! :D)
You may also like/fan us on our facebook page. The link is provided below our tagboard and above our twitter feed.
Cheers,
Vio
1. Swanky new design!
2. We've added a new page on Deadlines, linked to a Google Calendar. Do check that out and begin your applications early! If there's any relevant deadline we missed out, do give us a shoutout in the tagboard.
3. With the whole social media marketing thing going on, we decided to hop onto the bandwagon.
You may now follow us on twitter. (Look to your right! :D)
You may also like/fan us on our facebook page. The link is provided below our tagboard and above our twitter feed.
Cheers,
Vio
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Young, Educated, and Unemployed: A New Generation of Kids Search for Work in their 20s
The Lost Generation: What it's like for 20-somethings to go in search of meaningful work—and not find it.
Since January, for 35 hours a week, at a rate of $10 an hour, Luke Stacks has been working for a home-electronics chain. He answers the phone and attempts to coax callers into buying more stuff. This is not how he imagined he would be spending his late 20s.
Like a lot of us, Stacks was given a fairly straightforward version of how his life would unfold: He would go to college and study something he found interesting, graduate, and get a decent job. For a while, things went pretty much according to plan. Stacks, who now is 27, went to the University of Virginia, not far from where he grew up, majoring in American Studies. He later enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the University of Iowa, with the eventual goal of becoming a professor.
http://www.good.is/post/young-educated-and-unemployed-a-new-generation-of-kids-search-for-work-in-their-20s/
Since January, for 35 hours a week, at a rate of $10 an hour, Luke Stacks has been working for a home-electronics chain. He answers the phone and attempts to coax callers into buying more stuff. This is not how he imagined he would be spending his late 20s.
Like a lot of us, Stacks was given a fairly straightforward version of how his life would unfold: He would go to college and study something he found interesting, graduate, and get a decent job. For a while, things went pretty much according to plan. Stacks, who now is 27, went to the University of Virginia, not far from where he grew up, majoring in American Studies. He later enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the University of Iowa, with the eventual goal of becoming a professor.
http://www.good.is/post/young-educated-and-unemployed-a-new-generation-of-kids-search-for-work-in-their-20s/
Monday, October 11, 2010
Your Opinion Counts!
Here at NUSHSCollegeTalk we're constantly racking our brains to decide what we can write that you might find useful. We do hear from a good number of you via the tagboard, but I think we can do better, so here goes:
What would you want to know more about?
Leave your answer in the tagboard, or drop us an email, and it might just be the next post that appears on NUSHSCollegeTalk.
What would you want to know more about?
Leave your answer in the tagboard, or drop us an email, and it might just be the next post that appears on NUSHSCollegeTalk.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Why I gave up doing chemistry as a major
You would think that after 4 years of being in a math and science school, and 2 years before that hating on my humanities, taking up science in college would be a no brainer.
In fact, I myself thought it was a no brainer, and as I approached Year 5 and 6 I invested large amounts of $ in chemistry books from NUS, believing that I would use it then and for many more years in the future. However, I have always been fascinated by the study of human nature and the way they think and behave. Why do people behave the way they do sometimes, why people indulged in irrational behavior, how body language is a great indicator of the intentions of someone. Since I was unable to choose between these two subjects, I did what any kiasu Singaporean would do, I decided to do both. (On my PSC contract it actually says chemistry and/or psychology)
As with any other kiasu Singaporean student, I went into Stanford with the grand plan of completing 99999999 degrees with 99999999 modules per quarter, but of course my grand plan came to naught when I realized that it was not possible after all (ha!) to take 99999999 modules and finish in a realistic number of years. And Stanford simply has too many opportunities available for me to want to spend all my time on chemistry and psychology, and so I decided that I wanted to drop chemistry (in favour of economics which I will talk about in a separate post).
It was a somewhat painful decision all right, especially given the amount of time and $ I had invested in the subject, and also given the considerably easier path that I would have if I had taken this subject. I thought long and hard about the following:
1. Opportunity cost - how much will I be losing out on if I take chemistry as opposed to other things I could be doing with my time?
2. Why am I taking chemistry? Is it because I really like the subject or because I am good at it? It is very easy to take the easy path out and take a good GPA with minimal effort.
3. How much will I be learning, given that NUSHS has prepared us decently well for college level chemistry? (ask vanessa for more info about how well the school has prepared us)
4. How relevant will chemistry be to my job in future - in terms of chemistry knowledge and chemistry degree? What job prospects are available for chemists and will I be interested in those fields?
I can't say I don't like chemistry anymore, but I feel that I have reached a point where I am able to appreciate the basics and beauty of chemistry without needing to study more about it. NUSHS has prepared us so well for most of the sciences that I feel that it is unlikely that any additional knowledge that I learn to attain a chemistry degree will be relevant in the civil service in future. (Law of diminishing marginal utilities, haha) Not taking up a subject as your major does not mean that you are banned from dabbling in it in future - some of my dormmates come up to me and ask me for help with chem, and I am still able to appreciate it when I hear people talk about it!
In fact, I myself thought it was a no brainer, and as I approached Year 5 and 6 I invested large amounts of $ in chemistry books from NUS, believing that I would use it then and for many more years in the future. However, I have always been fascinated by the study of human nature and the way they think and behave. Why do people behave the way they do sometimes, why people indulged in irrational behavior, how body language is a great indicator of the intentions of someone. Since I was unable to choose between these two subjects, I did what any kiasu Singaporean would do, I decided to do both. (On my PSC contract it actually says chemistry and/or psychology)
As with any other kiasu Singaporean student, I went into Stanford with the grand plan of completing 99999999 degrees with 99999999 modules per quarter, but of course my grand plan came to naught when I realized that it was not possible after all (ha!) to take 99999999 modules and finish in a realistic number of years. And Stanford simply has too many opportunities available for me to want to spend all my time on chemistry and psychology, and so I decided that I wanted to drop chemistry (in favour of economics which I will talk about in a separate post).
It was a somewhat painful decision all right, especially given the amount of time and $ I had invested in the subject, and also given the considerably easier path that I would have if I had taken this subject. I thought long and hard about the following:
1. Opportunity cost - how much will I be losing out on if I take chemistry as opposed to other things I could be doing with my time?
2. Why am I taking chemistry? Is it because I really like the subject or because I am good at it? It is very easy to take the easy path out and take a good GPA with minimal effort.
3. How much will I be learning, given that NUSHS has prepared us decently well for college level chemistry? (ask vanessa for more info about how well the school has prepared us)
4. How relevant will chemistry be to my job in future - in terms of chemistry knowledge and chemistry degree? What job prospects are available for chemists and will I be interested in those fields?
I can't say I don't like chemistry anymore, but I feel that I have reached a point where I am able to appreciate the basics and beauty of chemistry without needing to study more about it. NUSHS has prepared us so well for most of the sciences that I feel that it is unlikely that any additional knowledge that I learn to attain a chemistry degree will be relevant in the civil service in future. (Law of diminishing marginal utilities, haha) Not taking up a subject as your major does not mean that you are banned from dabbling in it in future - some of my dormmates come up to me and ask me for help with chem, and I am still able to appreciate it when I hear people talk about it!
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