Chapter Two: An Honest Reboot

Today is the first day of the new semester!!

Yeah, I'm not really that excited. lol


I'm supposed to be in school today. Stupid lecture starts at 8am at who knows where. Thankfully my friend told me about the other session tomorrow. Normally, I wouldn't want to go to school on a Friday, because I'm supposed to have a bunch of tutorials on Thur, and no other lessons on Fri. I'm mean, who wants to go to school on a Friday?! Long weekend man, Fri + Sat + Sun = Win!

But this week is abit different. Since tutorials haven't started yet, Thur or Fri really makes no difference. I just don't feel like dragging my ass there early in the morning, and my friend is not going either, and I still have loads of shit to sort out, and other reasons. So I'll go tomorrow!





I'm feeling kinda weird right now. It's the start of a new semester, and I'm supposed to be excited? Or looking forward to something? But rather I'm feeling void of emotions, and unenthusiastic at best. Last semester was pretty fun for me, smooth sailing most of the way and I was totally fired up. I would say I did alright, only slightly stumbling towards the end of the semester. My SAP for last semester was only 4.0, but for a non-high-flyer scrub like me, it was already a super big improvement from first sem. I was supposed to be much better, but I didn't put in enough effort for CS2100 at the start. Technical subjects seem to be killing me alot. Sometimes I wonder if I'm taking the right Major. lol


This semester will be something a little different. Every semester, or heck every phase of life, has a central theme. It's just something that you keep as your core whether you know it or not, that you can use to make you stay on course and not be lost in the ups and down of everyday life. I've only discovered this strategy in recent years, and it takes some amount of time to hone it. And it was only last semester that I made active use of it.

Semester one's theme was the worst. I was still a newb and was pretty lost about what was going on at least 50% of the time. Because of that, I didn't really have any strategy or anything. I didn't choose it, but my central theme was Arrogance and Ignorance. Yea I know, not the best combination right? I just kinda assumed that I was good enough to make it this far, and thus would easily do well going forward. Needless to say, I had severely underestimated the implications of the bell curve phenomena.

Semester two, i.e. last sem, was a whole lot better. There were a few central themes, but it usually revolved around: Humble yet Strong. The whole idea was to be humble and do all the studying and work that is really all you need to do well. I had learned my lesson from first sem about being too arrogant and wanted to tone it down just a tiny notch. Yet, I knew I had to keep some pride and be strong throughout. My CAP needed to be saved. Looking back, while not perfect, I think I did fine. Could be better.

That brings us to this semester. What should my central theme be? I've thought about it for the past few days, and came up with one word: Honest. I usually like to have 2 words to work with, it just gives more balance I feel. But too many can cause chaos and become hard to remember. 2 is a good number, humans are dual core processors lol. Seeing as how I wasted the entire few months of holidays no doing any revisions, I'm going to put the other word as Diligence.

Central theme for this semester: Honesty and Diligence.

I haven't addressed the Honesty part yet. I've just been feeling that I should really do it. Being the thinker I am, I Always analyse stuff, always. And more often that not, I will analyse myself. Let's just say that I know of a couple of anti-social people, including myself. I know enough of them (and trust me this is hard), that I can actually see a range. From Very anti-social to Mildly anti-social. And I also know some social butterflies. One common thing I have observed that supposedly separates the 2 groups, is honesty.

When I talk of honesty, I don't mean the whole lot of us are lying all the time, not directly at least. I'm talking about being honest about your feelings, and just speaking your mind. Basically it is more about being honest to yourself more than anything else. For those not in the know, I'll let you in on a secret about us anti-social lot. I hope I don't get murdered by them, lol.

Basically, people who are deemed less social, have this mechanism that I call The Buffer. Some people call it living in a bubble. Bubble, buffer, barrier, shield, whatever you want to call it. It does a couple of things, firstly is preventing unnecessary communications with other people who are not your best friends, or just all people, depending on the magnitude of the buffer. Next, when people talk to you, the buffer will make your response slightly slower, but very much calculated. You want to come up with a response that is very well thought and something you think is good, before actually saying it. Both of this is done because they don't want to cause implications to the people communicating with them. We don't want no trouble.

While this is not necessarily a bad thing, in a way we are not being truthful to ourselves. Instead of saying what we are actually thinking, we stow it away and come up with a very politically correct answer instead. So, what I'm saying is let's scrap all of that. Let's be honest here, and just talk. While it may not make you a social butterfly, it is certainly a step in the right direction.

Sometimes I wonder if perhaps psychology and philosophy would interest me more that what I am currently doing. I don't know, but I love programming as well. There are so many concepts from programming that can be applied to our real life. For example I constantly do modular thinking, and pipelining my activities is a real time saver.

And I can go on and on and on... I must be bored. So here's a glimpse of me in the next few months: Honest and Diligent. I wish everyone I know at NUS a wonderful semester ahead! :)