Hell week

It's been three horrible weeks of projects and assignments.

Not exactly recognized for the effort, but the tutors and prospective employers will infer your capability from the transcript you get after you graduate. Just like the WYSIWYG version on a frontpage software, (an acronym that means) what-you-see-is-what-you-get. Somehow, our society works like the olden days during the Confucian Tradition. Education (although not explicitly expressed) is somewhat about memorization and rote, not about critical thinking and creative development of ideas. This seperates intellectual and practical work, and intellectual credibility seems to be more superior.

T H I S , is our singapore education.

Looking back, the Industrial Revolution were the results of the marriage of intellectual work AND skills. Although this is pretty much advocated and emphasized in Singapore, to what extent do we really encourage critical thinking combining with practical skills? Or is competency explained all on the paper we get after 15 years (16 for me) of education since the primary school and after all our parents hardearned money put into this investment?

I certainly hope not. :)

Anyhows, I've got a grand total of 5 reports, 5 presentations due in the past two weeks. All the other projects were still alright, because my other group members split up the work and helped one another out. Yes, that's right. The ulitization and appropriate use of synergy, least resulting in a (I won't say great) well-prepared submission, satisfactory for the amount of effort put in.

God knows why I'll always meet bizarre people around. I have two reports due in the same day the recent tuesday, totalling about 45 pages. My individual assignment was the killer; single-spacing requirements and only allowed to use information given from the article. And my topic required my utmost creativity and critical thinking to come up with a launch strategy for a new product.

Draining me of my creative juices, I thought I could be done with all the novelty launch planning. Just when I least expected, (since the first part report of another 20 pages was already mostly done by me in March) I had to spend endless hours to plan for another full-scale product launch group project, which seemed like a one-man-show. This horror seemed bad enough. Wait till you realise I was working in hell.

Every meeting, most members would arrive at least 45 minutes late. And some, would tell me they have to leave in 10minutes to attend another meeting even when they came late. Or the reason for being late, is that they had to attend other last minute meetings, even though we had our meetings arranged at least 3 days beforehand.

In the meeting, it's always like a director's speech session because I had to do most of the talking and everyone else just listened.

Before you make any judgements, let me explain myself. I did not assume this position of a leader but somehow, these people just can't be bothered to do anything. So I had to do something.

Whenever I tried to make sure everyone has a say in something, everyone just wished I would make the decision so the session will end asap. Whatever ideas I throw in, they're ok with it and no extra comments. When asked to contribute ideas, nothing came in as well. When everyone chose the parts they want to do, we each get our own responsibility and upload when it's done. And so you guess, nobody uploads on time and only does it right 15 minutes before the next meeting. In that sense, everybody has to read each others' parts on the spot!

For my part this time round, I'm in charged of making advertisements and commercials come alive. Which means, a lot of resource and photo hunting, photoshopping and voice editing has to be done. I'm in charge not because I stole the limelight again, but because they either don't have photoshop, don't know how to use or be really bad at it (and so they CLAIMED). Obviously, the arrows are targeted at me. As the rest were supposed to do the reports and come up with 1-2 page for another meeting, only one person came up with it. And they just told me they needed directions, so asked if I could type out another outline for them. The first one was already there, which was about 4 pages long.

Do you know what that means? Means I have to read up the textbook, reference online and come up with outline that adheres to the steps required and come up with cool ideas on my own!

Absolutely atrocious!

Fine. I went home, typed out what turns out to be a 10page outline, with sufficient details that simply needs to be expanded. A brainless activity. While they were doing that, I am slogging the nights away making and perfecting the pictures, sounds, timing,etc. I thought all these would pay off, if they came up with an impressive write up and brilliant powerpoint. Since everyone agreed to finalize everything on their own by the next morning right before the presentation, I also went with the wind.

The night before presentation, I recieved more than 30 sms from my members,each expecting me to proofread, organize, finalize and do up the appendix at 12.30am. I replied with an apology and explanation as to why I couldn't do it as I was still creating the ad, and definitely going to sleep at 4.30am again for 3 days in a row. The replies?

"Ha ha. Least you can still sleep. I'll won't be sleeping man."

I was so relieved. Least someone is committed and passionate about their graded project.

At 4.30am, I've finally completed all the visuals. But, nothing else was uploaded nor change. The report had overlapping parts and inconsistency, points just seemed disjointed. I was thoroughly tired, so I just glanced through and still, came up with appendix, eradicating overlaps and proofreading it myself (afterall!).

The next day morning, when we met up an hour early to rehearse (I would think that this means everything is finalized and we are there to practice our speech), to my horror, the powerpoint slides were not even near done. We had completely white background (its the default template ok) and black fonts, maybe just a master slide with an icon at the bottom.

And the first thing they said to me (without feeling a single sense of guilt and shame), "Er, I don't know how to arrange the slides. Can you do it now?" And shove the laptop right infront of my face. For the first time, I spoke in an harsh and sarcastic tone. " HUR HUR. I thought you guys said you weren't sleeping. Weren't you supposed to do this all night?"

"heeehehee.. No lah. I fell asleep after your sms, about 1am. Very tired you know?"

That very moment, my heart sank right deep, possibly deeper than Titanic I tell you. Not that I was sad, I was utterly disappointed. And pissed of course. Nobody cares a **** about it. Seriously, not-my-business-kind of attitude. Worse, it seemed like I owe everyone this favor to complete this tedious project. I really wanted to giveup and not present it anymore, since nobody cares a shit about this. I just gave the can't-be-bothered look anymore too. So we just proceeded, with the most sloppy and worse presentation and report EVER.

The only thing that I was happy about it was the commercial itself. Because the class laughed and some girls even commented that they liked it. And most importantly, cos it was my effort.

If it's any other projects like finance or human resource management, I thought it wasn't that bad to do alone. But this is marketing! How creative can the end-product and execution be using only one person's idea? Such a let down. Back in poly, everyone else contributed and make the best out of it. Having pride in what you can do and achieve. Sheesh.

It didn't matter if I spend 20 hours working on it because eventually, its the grade that matters. Nobody sees and recognizes the effort. So, no matter what methods you use, as long as you get a good final grade, be it skiving all the way or copying your final exam answers (not quite possible though), you'll still be seen as a capable and talented individual if you scored well.

Even if its work done, by someone else.