Do what your heart tells you. You may not start out richer than your pals. You may die poorer than your peers. You may take longer to buy that handphone you wanted. But it will all work out. Trust me.

not even masters and phd.

as there are more and more phd.

now the ultimate target is to be a prof.

this is what i heard from some parents which they saw what happen to some kids when i chat with them as i work in retail.

1 nurse also told me there are cases of these in the imh also.

very pitiful and sad.

I congratulate you for having written an excellent article.

But I wish to point out 2 things:
(1) The aim of education up to O Level or JC Level should be to train you in your thinking skills, foundational knowledge, and basic life competencies. The content of learning is not so important. The problem in Singapore is that these objectives were never clearly stated nor achieved. So most students end up merely trying to master content in order to ace examinations. As a result, most students end up as good as not being educated! This explains why many Singaporeans end up devoid of critical thinking, lacking appropriate social behaviour and deficient in morality despite “excellent” exam results.

(2) At Polytechnic and University levels and beyond, the content of what you learn becomes more important. At these levels, you are supposed to be more specialized in your studies and you cannot escape their relevance to your intended future career. The trouble in Singapore is that young people have little passion in their lives and even at this level, they have no idea what their life goals are.

It can be surmised that the mediocrity of Singapore society is the result of our poor education system.

The great Immigrant Culture in this world is the United States of America (USA). And I’m not particularly sure that the same questions come up in the USA.

I think the questions come up here because we have sinicized ourselves too much (despite the official multilingual policy). Pragmatism is part of Chinese culture, but not Malay or Indian culture, but the Malays and Indians have kind of gotten absorbed into parts of the Chinese culture.

Great article. I love how you challenge the basic assumption that most young people (and their parents) have, that what you study will ultimately become your career.

The fact is that it doesn’t, but we are constantly bombarded with questions like “Oh you’re studying philosophy/anthropology/etc/etc? What are you going to do with that?”

Such a question has roots in the immigrant culture and the need for economic survival.

I have more thoughts to add, but will do so later. Good job in bringing this up.

I enjoy studying topics that are useful and interesting. If I have to study it for my examinations, I find out how to make it interesting. It can be a skill that I can use, such as mathematics or science. I also enjoy history and philosophy, as they are useful in guiding our values in life.

I do not bother about studying to pass examinations. If I find the subject to be interesting and useful, I find that passing examinations is easy. I never bother about 10 year series.

Over the years, there were many occasions where I thought that I would fail the examination, as I did not prepare well. To my surprise, I passed these examinations.

During my time, I had to do many essay questions. As I understood the general principles, I was able to give a reply that the examiner could understand. Even if my answers were not exactly correct (based on the facts), I must have got points for explaining the key principles. So I passed.

I continue to adop tthis approach in learning today. I learned things that are useful. If I have to read an article, I prefer first to read a summary, or the first sentence in each paragraph. This gives me a broad idea. On the second round, I drilled down to read the paragraphs that are interesting.

Eddie Choo describes it as the “passion” of studying. I agree thta this is more important than studying to pass examinations.

For most of us doing Liberal Arts and/or Humanities, studying what you love is maybe a choice but many pragmatic people see it as a bad choice. Good for you if you like science and are doing it, because people think study that got future one. There’s still no place for the arts in Singapore (you know why Arts students are looked down on in JC by Science students now?)

Easier to love what you do, but lazier to love what you do.

A degree in liberal arts is definitely interesting, to people who’s interested in it anyway, but is unlikely to aid one very much in high-paying job seeking. The rewards are possibly in the forms of self-enrichment & self-fulfilment & not financial. You could end up never recovering the $ you spent on the degree. But you gained a whole new level of understanding of the subject & yourself. If one can afford it, I’d say, it’s $ well-spent. After all, life is but a few decades. Lucky ones would live for a century.

I may not be doing something I enjoy right now, probably for survival’s sake, but at least I’m doing something righteous and not against my own conscience, not against the law. I stand by what I do.

The problem is:

1) You don’t know what you love do.
2) What you love to do changes with time.
3) What you love to do doesn’t pay the bills.

It’s easier to love what you do.