For many of us, spring cleaning is an annual event with our family members in preparation for Chinese New Year. As we usher in the new year and embrace a fresh start, we declutter our rooms, clean the furniture, and put up vibrant red decorations symbolising a bright future. This year, the NTU-USP Club’s Social Service Projects committee collaborated with Central Singapore Community Development Council (CDC) to organise the annual USPringClean.

Leading up to the event, a few of us conducted door-to-door visits to introduce ourselves and better understand the seniors’ living conditions. These areas included the kitchen, living room, ceiling, doors, and gates. Personally, it was quite nerve-wrecking as I had never painted homes and did not want to disappoint the elderly. Nonetheless, I was looking forward to helping the elderly organise their homes and provide a cleaner and safer environment to live in!

With other NTU-USP student volunteers, I made my way to Whampoa on an early Saturday morning to spruce up the homes of the elderly residents, many of whom are too frail and require help cleaning their homes. We collected our cleaning and painting kits, had one last briefing, and proceeded to the respective units. Each unit had different needs and my group was tasked with painting the door and gate. It took some work to manually scrape off the old paint and clean every edge of the door, but it was definitely worth the smiles on the residents’ faces as they looked at the fresh coat of paint.

While the cleaning and painting was tiring, the most memorable part of my experience was enjoying lunch and interacting with the elderly. As we gathered round a small table in the living room, we listened to the residents talk excitedly about their heritage, children, and grandchildren. Perhaps this was what made all the hours of planning and execution worth it. Simply giving the elderly the time of day and listening to their stories reminded me of the times I spent with my grandparents and made me reflect on the isolation that some of them face daily. The heart-warming conversations with them brought me greater joy and satisfaction than all the cleaning and painting I did.

As the event came to an end, we bade farewell to the elderly and gave them mandarin oranges as a symbol of conferring well wishes. Looking at the before and after pictures of the units, I was pleasantly surprised and very grateful to all volunteers who made time to join the event.

Finally, this event would not have been possible without my main committee: Glendon, Caitlin, Joie, Jolin and Wen Hao. I certainly hope to be back as a participant for USPringClean in the coming years!

Submission by:

Kong Song Wah, Hannah, Year 2, Biological Sciences

If you asked me why I applied for NTU-USP 2 years ago when I first graduated Junior College, I couldn’t really tell you much back then. To be very honest, I didn’t know much about NTU-USP during the university application process. In fact, I was more concerned with getting into my main major, Communications, as I had set my sights on it midway through JC.

But after 1 semester in NTU, I can safely say that the NTU-USP family (or USPHAM) has been a huge source of joy and comfort in helping me transition to university life. USP isn’t just a group of scholars — it’s actually a family in itself.

My journey in USP began after I accepted the NTU-USP offer. I was then assigned a USP buddy, Cherie, who was a Year 1 in the same course as me. She’s probably already in her final year by now (due to me spending 2 years in NS), but I remember asking her a ton of questions about the school and the scholarship back then. It may seem trivial, but having a senior and buddy you can talk to before you even matriculate is the most comforting thing in the world. University is a confusing and complex phase in your life, and things just happen without you really noticing or understanding how they work. So to have a buddy is to have a guide — someone to tell you what deadlines you have to meet, what your matriculation process will be like, what documents you have to submit, and where to access certain things so you’re not completely lost in week 1. And USP was the first to reach out to me in the months and years before I even matriculated.

This sense of mentorship continued further when I went for USP’s Freshman Orientation Programme. Our OGs (Orientation Groups) were initially split into sub-OGs, with about 5-6 freshmen to 1 OGL (Orientation Group Leader). This made orientation a lot less daunting — we weren’t bombarded with an entire new batch at once. A lot of people dread the idea of orientation — what with having to introduce yourself and participate in a bunch of games — but the USP seniors were happy to sit and relax with us even if we weren’t that enthusiastic about the activities.

One OGL in particular stood out to me — my Bravestone OGL Syed Zaheen. He’s everything you would need in a senior: tells you everything you may need to know, answers and explains even the dumbest of freshmen questions, and gives advice on pretty much any aspect of university life. I’ve asked him about things like the scholarship GIRO application, the STARS process, checking into hall, joining CCAs, the fastest way to get to Pioneer MRT from various bus stops, and even how the staircases and levels work in hall. I found myself asking him questions that I would otherwise have turned to Reddit for — a testament to how helpful he was as a senior.

As the semester progressed, USP became a small community for me to fall back on. The batch is small — only about 50-odd students or so each year — so by the end of the first semester we all pretty much knew each other. We stay in the same halls (for the Year 1s at least), go for the same core USP modules, and stuck together with those in the same majors as us. USP modules also tend to be evening seminars (the last class of the day), and as a result, we found ourselves always having dinner together as a mini USP batch after these seminars. This may have been a simple thing, but amidst the confusion that is Year 1 of university life, it was a calming thought to know that you’ll always have these few familiar faces to eat dinner with at the end of the day.

And this brings me to TOPS, the year-end research module that all USP Year 1s go for. To travel overseas as an entire batch after your first semester in university — and to do it with the freedom of planning your own group’s itinerary — is honestly such a unique bonding experience that I am forever grateful to be a part of. It’s like an initiation into USP — a second orientation, if you will. It’s an experience that truly cements you as part of the USPHAM, from the very moment you board the plane at Changi Airport and think to yourself, “Wow, so this is what NTU-USP is all about.”

Now all this may sound like a shameless plug for NTU-USP. But I can truly say that USP has been the bedrock of my university experience so far. USP is a family that’s here for me from the beginning to the end.

Submission by:

Adam Bin Mohamed Razali, Year 1, CS