Coming straight on the heels of Oikos: The Escapade, I was physically not at my best as I checked in for SMUX Camp. But there was a palpable sense of relief. Finally! On to the last camp out of 4 (SMUCF Camp, FTB, and Oikos: The Escapade being the others).

SMUX Camp was different from the other camps in that the camp was structured around a certain fixed set of activities, instead of the generic bonding, station games, and performance nite layout of previous camps. And it was refreshing, to be able to get to know my group mates better through activities instead of being baby-sitted through specific bonding games.

My group, Chubby Bunnies, was great! Lotsa nice, fun people. They made the camp fun and enjoyable despite my tiredness, having come straight from Oikos. Thanks guys!

Click through to read more about the camp!

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Oikos: The Escapade marked the first of a double-header of camps within the span of 1 week for me (SMUX Camp started on Wednesday and overlapped with the last day of Oikos). Had a good mix of people in my Breakfast at Tiffany’s group (the group name was assigned to us… we had no say).

Click through to read more about Oikos: The Escapade!

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Freshmen Team-Building camp was certainly better than expected!

Upon walking into the registration area, I was pleasantly surprised to learn I was in the 1st group of the 1st section. That meant that I was in Run 1, Section 1, Group 1. And my group (appropriately named by us as THE ONE) truly lived up to our billing as the FIRST group of FTB.

We had great group members who were vocal and enthusiastic. We did well for all the situational challenges, which formed the bulk of FTB. Everyone contributed ideas and were participative. The guys especially helped out loads with some of the tougher challenges (rafting, horizontal spider-web) which required more strength.

Click through to read about the highlights of the camp!

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Back from a spiritually and emotionally refreshing SMUCF camp! Have to say I really enjoyed it, the people, fellowship, games, messages. All were wonderfully planned by the Planning Comm (thanks Kenji and Co.!) Twas held at the LKCSB, our messages were held in a SR, group discussions were at various GSRs, and we had separate sleeping rooms fer guys and gals in 2 different CRs. (haha, unique acronyms for SMU rooms!)

Justus, Celest, and myself made up a strong contingent from FERC! (Enoch joined us for day 2). But there were many others from various churches and denominations, ranging from the BP churches to the Charismatics to those who had not attended a church service before (hooray to Xing Yan!)

Click through to read about the highlights of the camp!

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Finally, I am an SMU undergraduate, majoring in Economics.

After 3 years of pre-school, 6 years of primary education, 4 years of secondary school, 2 years of junior college, and 1 year 10 months of serving my country in the National Service, I have arrived at this very important stage in my life: tertiary education.

Economics at SMU, Part 1 - Econs??? Never!!!
I did not once think throughout my secondary education and junior college days that I would be majoring in Economics.

In secondary school, at ACS(I), I had studied:

• English
• Chinese
• Elementary Mathematics
• Advanced Mathematics
• Physics
• Chemistry
• Biology
• Geography
• Literature
• Social Studies

In junior college, at ACJC, my subjects were:

• General Paper
• Chinese
• Mathematics
• Physics
• Chemistry
• Biology
• Project Work

So nopes, no Econs anywhere. In fact, I had not wanted to take Econs in JC, despite much advice to the contrary, for the following reasons:

• I felt I was a Science person
• Taking Econs would have meant dropping one of the three Sciences (dropping Mathematics, such a core subject, is a big no-no). I wanted to keep my options open with regards to choice of courses in university.
• Not taking Econs at JC level was not much of a disadvantage as an introductory economics course at tertiary level would cover all the JC content within a semester. Furthermore, tertiary economics, involving much more maths, was much different to that taught at JC level.

Instead, I opted, and was accepted, for a new course, Engineering Science, that was to be offered at NUS. I felt that Physics had always been my strongest suit and it was only natural for me to progress in that direction.

Click through to continue reading about what influenced my decision to change course, and also my thoughts about Matriculation Day, an important step in my SMU journey!

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