Oh, how I’ll miss hall life!

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It took me a while to make the decision to move out of hall and back home as I’d only be taking two modules next semester. As I’ve lived on the NTU campus for the past three years, I’m still not quite ready to leave.

For one, this place is beautiful, especially when the sun sets. Being far from the madding crowd, we have some of the best views. NTU is hilly and the buildings are low, unlike many places in Singapore, where the sky is often blocked out by tall buildings. The sky here is vast, and to look out of the window (after an entire afternoon of hitting the books) to a bruised evening sky is one of the best stress relievers, and always leaves me in awe.

Proof? This is the view from my hall:

sun1 6.30pm, taken from my block on the way back to my room at Hall 16.

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A summer to remember

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Looking back at my holidays, I had a truly enjoyable summer exchange at the University of Technology of Troyes in France.

Together with the other NTU students, I took two modules, Project Management and European Culture. These classes were conducted with American exchange students from Michigan, Buffalo and Binghamton. Every weekend, the university would also bring us to different places in France to experience the “French” way of living.

Paris

Our first weekend was in Paris. We did everything a tourist could possibly do, such as climbing the famous Eiffel Tower. Our experience would have been more enjoyable if the winds weren’t so strong, though!

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A (freshman) year to remember

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I’ve always wanted to become a war journalist, so the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication & Information (WKWSCI) was my dream school.

Now that I’m here, I aim to make my journey a fulfilling one. In my first semester last year, I took seven modules, even though most of my peers took 5 to 6 modules per semester. I particularly enjoyed the News Reporting and Writing module – it taught me how to write headline-worthy and breaking news, a skill that will be essential if I ever become a war correspondent!

I also signed up to be on the main committee of WKWSCI’s Freshman Orientation Camp (FOC). My seniors and peers made me feel very welcome during my camp, and I wanted to pass on this good experience to my juniors. School truly feels like home when the cohort size is 180 and everyone knows almost everyone else.

Another good thing about WKWSCI: They know how to have fun!

The school shakes things up for us by organising fun, morale-boosting events nearly every week. For example, there was a Theme Week where we had to dress up according to a specific theme each day.

dan1Once, we attended class in our old school uniforms. (See if you can spot me: I’m the only guy in the first row.)

Photos Credited to 20th CI Club

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5 best memories…

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As the curtain falls on my time at NTU, I can’t help thinking about the past three years of my short yet eventful undergrad life at the Nanyang Business School that was filled with joy, laughter and challenges…

1) Case competitions

Designing a cool online marketing communication campaign for CP Foods? Trying to sell their frozen food products on a rainy afternoon? Yes, my team of three did them all and bagged the second prize to boot.

Winning the prize money, however, was not the best part, as such success and happiness is short-lived. It’s the memory of celebrating with fellow NTU participants, and the strong friendships we’ve forged, that will stick with me for life.

n1Three of the five finalist teams at the CP Marketing Challenge 2012 came from NTU. Hip, hip, hooray!

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Welcome, “villains”!

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In the REP (Renaissance Engineering Programme) family, we don’t consider bonding to be an important thing. We consider it to be everything.

As you might know from my previous posts, love, respect and a little bit of insanity run in the REP family, and the first step towards building all of these is the Freshmen Orientation Camp (FOC) – an event fondly organised by the awesome REP seniors to welcome juniors with a bang!

So here is an exclusive sneak peek into Ignire 2013. “Ignire” is the latin word for “ignite”, and surely, we saw some magnificent fireworks (metaphorically, of course) this year. The camp theme was “Super Villain” and as Shao Ying, President of the Organising Committee, put it, this was “a camp different from other camps as the freshmen trained to be true villains!”. So clearly this year, it was all about being “bad” and living dangerously.

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Eye to eye with CEOs…

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Despite juggling many academic activities in my final year at the Nanyang Business School, I couldn’t resist taking part in the Undergraduate Research Experience on CAmpus (URECA) programme, a vigorous by-invitation-only elective that aims to bring out the researcher in us.

I chose to work with Asst Prof Kim Young Han on a finance and psychology project that involved analysing interviews given by CEOs to the financial media.

As an undergraduate majoring in tourism and marketing, I jumped at the chance to delve into a complementary field of expertise that I wouldn’t normally be exposed to.

Our aim was to find a way to detect the subtle clues CEOs inadvertently reveal in public media through their non-verbal behaviour. This purpose may seem trivial, but the results could help investors make more well-informed decisions on where to put their money – we’re talking about billions of dollars!

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Hey, folks, it’s a wrap!

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Four years ago, I stepped into NTU a bleary-eyed freshman, unsure of my passions and still finding my footing in life.

Now, as I’m about to graduate from the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication & Information (WKWSCI), I’m proud to say my decision to study here was the right one.  

Here are some of my best undergraduate moments:

1) Travelling to Durban, South Africa, for an international conference

Last year, my group mates and I were lucky to obtain a travel grant from the school, which subsidised the cost of our trip to South Africa for the International Association for Media and Communication Research conference. There, we presented our research project on the thought processes that people engage in when forming attitudes on nuclear energy use.

I’m really grateful to WKWSCI for giving us this great opportunity.

Jeremy41The academics we met at the international conference were both surprised and impressed by the fact that we were only undergraduates.

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It’s the journey that matters

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As the academic year draws to a close, I’m reminded of the courses I took this semester. There’s one that I believe will always be fondly remembered by all REP students – the Build and Test Project. This module set our creative juices flowing and motivated us to push beyond our self-imposed limitations.

This course lasted two semesters, and in the second semester, we had to design a remote-controlled toy car that could run on a self-made zinc-copper chemical battery. It turned out to be quite a challenge. We were competing on speed, distance and innovation, and the teams were clearly trying to outdo one another. We could hear cries of frustration, anxiety and plain old anger in the lab, when despite all attempts to get the cars to move, they refused to. Corrosion of cells, sputtering and dying motors, and inexplicable fumes from the motherboard (yet another short circuit?) – the list of glitches seemed never-ending.

But desperation is the mother of invention. As we neared the end of the 12-week long assignment, I was both surprised and impressed by the discipline, commitment and creativity demonstrated by my fellow classmates. People worked overnight on their designs, burning the midnight oil over solders, screwdrivers and hand drills. On the final test day, we saw some amazing ideas in action – dry batteries, 3D printed chasses, self-developed apps for control and, of course, cars that ran up a 7-metre slope in 7 seconds.

s11Exciting car-nival: our roadsters getting ready to race.

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Sketches from France

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Out of curiosity, how many of you have watched Les Misérables? Man, the film version last year was awesome, but don’t expect explosions or car chases like you might see in a Michael Bay movie. Some of my friends complained that Les Miz was too “singy”. But I said: “Duuuude, it’s a musical. Whaddya expect?”

Anyway, I asked because I was lucky enough to visit the very place Les Miz was filmed. That’s right – France! Studying European art in my first semester in NTU certainly proved useful there.

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My fantastic FYP journey

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This is probably the only time in my student life where I get to work on a year-long project with my friends. I would not trade the experience for anything else, and am really glad we finished the project without any major disputes!

Under the caring guidance of our supervisor Assoc Prof May Oo Lwin, my group mates and I worked on a health communication project in the area of food nutrition labelling.

Basically, we experimented with different types of food packaging and studied their effects on participants who seek nutrition information.

We designed and created our own food packaging, and used them as stimuli in the experiment. We were in charge of everything – from design to data collection to report writing. Although it wasn’t our first time designing an experiment, it was within a research area that was completely new to us. But our determination held strong, and we finished the project amidst crazy schedules, tight deadlines and last-minute “heart attacks”.

We were also fortunate enough to get our research paper accepted for an academic conference in Japan. Two of us got to travel to Kyoto for the presentation, thanks to a travel grant from WKWSCI. It was truly an honour to represent the school!

We journeyed to Osaka, where we visited the beautiful Osaka Castle. Then, we shopped till we dropped at the Shinsaibashi-suji shopping district and gorged on delicious okonomiyaki, a Japanese savoury pancake filled with various ingredients.

Kyoto, where the conference was held, proved to be another captivating city, with cherry blossoms at the Kyoto Garden Palace and the historic Kiyomizudera Temple, one of Kyoto’s many cultural heritage sites. However, the most memorable moment was stepping into a restaurant after a weary day of travelling, and being greeted by polite and endearing Japanese staff who served us fresh authentic Japanese food… oishi!

jeremy3_1Beautiful flowers and even more beautiful memories

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