Ehrenfest's posts about studies, career, relationships, life

UltimaOnline SG

On another Singapore-based forum, an ex-Singaporean (who left Sg after his JC life and have never returned since; he's now doing his PhD overseas) shares his viewpoints in a couple of interesting posts.

Note : I would have liked to give the link to the source material (ie. no plagarism intended), but that would be against SgForum rules.

Ehrenfest's post about "studies, career and life", made in a forum thread discussion on the new University SUTD :

To be exact, I found out from my friends that I'm classified as an "absconder". Every year or so you have the guy who gets accepted to Cambridge, asks for permission to disrupt but gets turned down, weighs between the worth of 2 years of his life and his pink IC versus his future, factors in the financial burden on his family, and so decide to run. About 45 of us in my year, I heard.

I don't want to say too much about what I'm doing now because very few people know that I'm a deserter, but many people know me. School? It feels that you're fed more than you can chew. Like drinking from a firehose. I'm not sure what you mean by my "situation"? If you elaborate, I could give you a more specific answer.

I served for about 8 months, up till some time before orientation, then got on the plane and left. My family isn't rich; fortunately, my tuition is fully covered by the school (it's bond-free). I left for three reasons.

1) For one, maybe, I plan to go home one day and serve my dues, to reason what I did with the court in a trial. After all, I didn't have to serve those 8 months for nothing if I simply wanted to escape hardship.

2) But it's also true that I was really fed up with the system. I wanted to contribute in the way that I felt best suited my ability, but that ran me into many conflicts with my superiors. One of the things they said, and I always remember, was, "If you have a diploma in engineering or something, we could put you in DSTA, but not someone with A levels." Serving is not a problem for me. But isn't it more meaningful if they let me graduate from university, then contribute with what I had learnt? Why make teach a kid run a computer system, when you can let him get a degree in computer science or information systems, then come back to make improvements on that system? Isn't that what they're doing for NUS medicine admits? That among many other things they did as superiors that were dishonest, unjust, partial and simply immoral. If I were a MP's son, I would have sent them to hell. If I was a doctor's son, I would have sued them.

3) I fell in love with a girl who was studying at a school 15,134km away from home. At that time, I was a stupid idiot in JC and had never flown further than Malaysia - and she was a freshman at MIT but younger than me by 2 years. She would have graduated by the time I finished my NS. You only get one shot at things like this. Of course, I still spend time with other girls now, but she's the one that I care for the most. Love makes you do silly things.

Hmm, what should you do... I mean, there are just too many things I need to know about you to tell you what to do. So I'll just throw around some ideas for you to think through.

Australia and USA are extremely different. I would pool my applications in the same country in your position, both because I think the cultural factor means a lot to you, and also because it's more practical. You're paying hundreds to do your SATs I and II. At least pay a comparable amount of money to apply for your schools. It's not so troublesome to make multiples if you've already put together one application. I don't get people who go through all that trouble to apply to Harvard/Yale, or for the UK-guys, Cambridge/Oxford, and then get rejected and decide to settle for NUS or something.

One of the questions I was asked for my MIT interview was, "What other schools are you applying to?"

It sounds like a direct question, but it can be leading. I said, "Stanford, Cornell, a couple of safeties..." Do you think it would have reflected very well on me if I said, "I'm not applying anywhere else,"? I don't know. Maybe it doesn't matter if one is not going for an interview, but this seems to provoke a thought that something is clearly wrong with applying just for your dream school or two.

Also, never fall in love with a school before you get accepted by it. More so if the acceptance rates are below 10%.

There's a magical word: transfer. Even if you get rejected for freshman year, you could always go to one of your backups in USA and transfer either in sophomore year or junior year. It is easier to transfer within the country than outside. Transferring is more common here than you're familiar with - people probably don't do that much in Singapore. I even know someone who's in Caltech but wants to transfer out.

You can always retake your SATs if you really want it. I *really* wanted it, because I had no other option as I had made up my mind to abscond.

Point 1) Let's set one thing aside... business/finance/accounting does not equate, nor is it a necessary condition to being rich. For one, the average business major's starting pay and median career pay has always been below that of the average engineer. You don't have to be a businessman to be rich.

For example, see the 10 richest on the Forbes list right now... except for Buffet and Mittal, I think, everyone else has an engineering or science background. The same runs in the richest in Singapore. Sim Wong Hoo has a technical background. Ho Ching has an electrical engineering degree. Olivia Lum has a chemistry degree. PM Lee, who's more controversial, but let's face it, is still rich, has his undergraduate degrees in computer science and mathematics.

Let's look at a field where you'd think this trend is less expected - but the truth turns out more alarming. What are the largest hedge funds founded from scratch in present day? Renaissance Technologies is run by James Simons, who was a mathematics professor. Who was the most successful hedge fund manager in 2010? Don Brownstein, a former physics professor. Soros Fund Management, where most of George Soros's money originated from, is 5th on a list topped by JP Morgan (which was founded 140 years earlier). But it might surprise you that Soros was a philosophy major.

This year, the Josiah Willard Gibbs lecture was given by George Papanicolaou, who does mathematical finance at Stanford. He said: there are some 3-4 seminal papers in research in finance, that's all. Why? Because everyone who has read these papers and was capable of publishing something better simply chooses to quit academics and start their own hedge fund. Physicists and mathematicians are very successful in finance - "I wonder who finds time to teach these classes?" he joked.

In fact, if, lessons learned, you want to be rich, statistically speaking, you should choose engineering over business.

Point 2) But perhaps the salient point to learn here is understated: if you want to be successful, pursue something that you are willing to pour your life in.

(This is even easier to verify. Li Ka-shing had the drive to spend months reading on a particular business before getting into it. How much of the cityscape that you see from the Benjamin Sheares bridge belongs to him now? How long did it take for Lewis Hamilton to make his first million from racing? How long did it take Rafael Nadal or Roger Federer to make their first millions from tennis? Bill Gates? Mark Zuckerberg? Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz?)

Pursue your passion. We hear it too often, but it's not some lame advice. It's also one of the favorite metrics of admissions committees in USA. Unfortunately, it's also least-noticed by our guys back home in SG.

Point 3) Now that we've pinned it down to a problem of passion, I need to point out a complication. Your passion/direction will change more than you believe it when you enter college. In fact, I'd estimate that a staggering 90% of the people I know here have switched majors or are simply undecided about their futures.

But this also means that it's not good to tie yourself to something too specific. I can't explain this very well, but I'll leave you a real story to ponder...

There's a person who really, really loved animals. She set her sights on studying veterinary science, because she wanted to take care of them, and make life better for them. That was the only thing that she wanted to do - that's perfect - not many people identify so strongly to a specific passion. So she didn't see why it would hurt to tie herself to a scholarship. She even got what she coveted most: the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority scholarship. She got her degree and came back. And they posted her to an abattoir, to be in charge of slaughtering animals.

You never know where life leads you. I'll tell you, even if you had spent months reading up, the act of choosing your university is, say, a bet with 10~% odds. There are so many things that you won't know until you settle down in university, or some things even up till you're a sophomore, junior that you simply won't know... Some of these are bad. You adapt to them, or you evade them, move out, quit school. Some of these are pleasant surprises. So many uncertainties. What more a bet on your future?

I'd suggest having a few 'safety nets'. For instance, although I deserted, I had many limiting conditions - I'd still advise *most* people who come to me not to desert because it leaves more open options. Similarly, it will be nice if you could find schools that have decent programs in biology/physiology/social sciences, as well as management/economics. You could even promise to minor in the latter.

Point 4) A minor works out nicely. My belief is that physiology/psychology/sociology are more specialized fields - you simply need to invest so much in it to be of use. Same goes with something like electrical engineering or physics, you need to take so many classes before you can piece together everything and do something useful with your knowledge. On the other hand, business is very generic. Everyone can do business, to a varying degree. And it's not something that's easy to teach. Also, you could dabble a bit in it (say, just 1 class in business law) and still do something useful with what you've learnt.

(Some people, like me, plain SUCK at it no matter how much you try to teach it. True story: I had 2 FREE tickets up the Eiffel tower with me, because my friends missed their flights. I wanted to GIVE them away. Man, the queues for the ticket counters at the Eiffel tower are INSANELY long, believe me, they are like McDonalds Hello Kitty fads. I walked in circles around the base for 20 minutes, and NO ONE wanted my free tickets!)

Point 5) One of the best things about US education is its flexibility. You can take courses in areas unrelated to your major but still satisfy your graduation requirements. You can also have an undeclared major for a year or more. You're admitted to a college, not a course (well, except for a rare few places like UPenn). It's not unusual to find a physicist, mathematician, computer scientist, pre-med etc. who has also done political science, history, art, music, economics, management etc. You can take this further and even freely minor in it. Say, you reach the 4th year of college and decide, hey I'm only a couple of courses from a minor in this, and I like these classes - sure, you can take those remaining classes and add a minor.

Besides, business administration per se is usually a *graduate* degree in USA. The option is always open to you while you're doing your undergrad. My friend at MIT is probably the most accomplished musician coming into school - even more so than the professor - it was her passion, it *is* her passion and you can still see it. She couldn't see herself doing anything else. But due to certain circumstances, she's now majoring in course 15 (management science).

If you're grounded in NUS electrical engineering on the other hand, you're grounded in it. There's no way you have this sort of flexibility. I'm not sure about the Australian system but since they're in the Commonwealth, I think it's the same.

Optional Point 6) All these rational arguments aside, I just feel it's wrong to take into account what other people think you should do. They're not you. They're not the ones who have to put up with possibly studying something they don't enjoy for 3, 4, or even 6, 8 years.

A lot of my friends chose biology over physics in JC. Why, physics is more fun, I asked? Because they wanted to get in NUS medicine - for no reason, except that it's more prestigious - and felt biology was more involved.

I was better at biology. I had a B3 in physics. But I chose to take physics. I improved at it. Landed my H3 in physics. Went to university to pursue pure science. Worked with a professor, turns out he is doing a research project with Harvard medical school and had use for me. I hopped on.

So well, I might not have made it to NUS medicine (probably would've gotten rejected if I had applied, lol!) I don't get to do anything bio-ish. But at least I get to do what I enjoy at Harvard med! You'll be surprised that they need people who can crank out Lie algebras at a medical facility.

You don't have to commit to a particular career, but at least do something that you'll enjoy until you're decided.

Another post by Ehrenfest below, "Getting better with girls". Yeah it's not the typical schoolwork stuff, but it's worth a read.

For guys only: Getting better with girls

UltimaOnline SG

A post Ehrenfest made about MIT (the University in collaboration with SUTD) :

I think a lot of people are mistaken about MIT.

Let me first enumerate some of the really good things about MIT
-the resources to put its students in the best paths to future success; you're almost guaranteed a summer internship somewhere in New York if you apply; in Bell labs, in Harvard summer school, in Cambridge (exchange program), in Japan etc. Before school starts for the semester, they organize banquets for you to get to know big shots in your field, eat dinner with them, talk to them; and a whole week of career fairs with the real big companies. The connections are set up for you.

-the student body;
-->some of the most fun parties in the Boston region are actually based around MIT
--> your classmates are all either very bright or come from well-connected families around the world: they'll be your club mates, your friends, your roomates, the ones who work with you on your problem sets each day, or play DDR with...

-the whole academic program where you can freely register in various departments. And this entails the professors, graduate students (who act as TAs), postdoctoral fellows etc. are in the forefront of their fields; many of the courses first taught in MIT end up being the stuff of textbooks written for other schools to teach... Email was available to the students before most of us even signed up for our free 5 MB hotmail addresses. A physics professor showed how you could cook something with microwaves in class before the microwave oven was even sold.

-the intellectual environment; in fact the greatest thing about this place - if you dropped by Harvard square next door even on the night of a holiday, you'd see the cafe at the coop bookstore filled with students studying, the roads bustling with life; the lights in the labs on, the room lights on all about Simmons Hall, the life just starting on a next gear in the dorms. It is a culture that you cannot recreate in Singapore in 10, 20, 30 years.

However, the things which make MIT great are only handed to you at MIT itself. It makes little difference that SUTD is a collaboration.

Talk about collaboration. You can cross-register with Harvard at MIT. But you're still missing out on 99.9% of Harvard life. I could be doing my research with a professor at Princeton - that's a collaboration too - but I don't gain from Princeton at all. I could spend a weekend at Columbia, Yale, etc. - possibly more than what most people who get accepted to SUTD will end up spending at MIT - but I haven't gained a single thing from what make them great schools, because it's simply different.

I received those SUTD handouts back when I was applying for my university. I would have applied to NUS/NTU if I was still back in Singapore. For one, they are still bigger (in terms of both facilities and academic program), more established and more accredited. The courses offered in SUTD are really awkward, anyway. They all incorporate some design element in it (the last I recalled)? I don't remember. I just felt it was out of place.

Don't choose a school for petty things like this. If you really want to get an MIT experience, apply straight to MIT. There are also many good schools around in USA, UK, Europe which can give you a different, arguably as enriching experience as MIT.

UltimaOnline SG

Another one of his "international perspective" posts on girls.

Here's my two cents. I deserted NS. When I was 'in there' for a couple of months, it was the same situation as you're going through: everyone seemed to have, or have had, a girlfriend. Either that or they were actively pursuing girls; going to gym, or spending their weekends clubbing.

I didn't do all these and thought I was left out, too.

Fortunately, I got out and realized from an outsider's perspective that there wasn't anything wrong with being single and 'inactive'. It can be a good thing not to have a girlfriend yet, too.

Advice 1: Yes, it's good to socialize. There's no way to 'swee swee' google, read, research and in one try you get the girl of your dreams. It definitely comes with practise and failure. But it's not too late to start once you're out of NS either. In my case, fortunately I didn't waste my time doing all those in NS, because the girls that came in my life outside of NS were way outside the league of those I would have met in SG. So I really enjoyed myself meeting them and picking up on where I was missing on.

Advice 2: Why can it be a good thing? Well, girls like to be a part of your life; they don't want *you* to be a part of their lives. Or at least the girls who are worth your time, really. What does this mean?

It's good to have a life. Drinking, clubbing, going out dating, watching movies, holding hands and walking down Orchard regularly etc. are not hobbies, careers, ambitions, pursuits, passions... So if instead of doing these, you spent time pursuing things which are meaningful: learn another language, learn how to sing, dance, study, learn more about geography of this world, travel more, become good at something - I guarantee you, a girl would want to be a part of your life, eventually.

Advice 3: There are plenty of fish in the water. Singaporean girls only represent 0.05~% of the girls out there. Why hurry to hook up? I didn't enjoy the company of the local girls at all, I didn't see the need to put my time in them instead of pursuing my interests.

My story: I didn't see it this way when I left Singapore at first... I was pretty low on self-esteem in this section - I wasn't popular with the girls, I didn't have a girlfriend all through secondary school, JC, my short stint in NS etc. Then I came to know the girls in USA - some are downright dumb, but there are many who have WAY more interesting life experiences, who are intelligent and fun to be with. Then I had an Italian girlfriend >.< An American girlfriend - we hooked up in France.

The last story was really interesting. She was a model-cum-undergraduate in US, but she happened to drop by France because she finished a photo shoot for FHM Germany. And she was used to rich guys treating her good food, partying, clubbing etc., because that sort of stuff runs in her work. Well, I'm a nerdy guy; I made her eat budget take-out with me, jaywalk in SG fashion and nearly get killed, admire the cars in showrooms which I couldn't afford in SG because of the COE prices - what a change it was that I could afford them out of SG... That's the sort of life I used to live - but I lived it with a passion, I took pride in my life, and so, too, she found it fun to be around me.

After all, if you don't find your own life fun, why would someone else find it fun? So, do what you enjoy, pursue something meaningful - it doesn't have to be finding a girlfriend, and I'm sure the best will come to you.

--------------------

Mmm, angmoh girls are generally more independent and mature. Some of them can be very family-oriented too: e.g. I found Portuguese girls very close to their family, and of course in Italy, almost every girl only goes out with her boyfriend or family! I don't see them alone or with bunch of friends very often. If they're alone - they're rushing off to meet their family!

To sum it all up, I find them better "wife candidates".

The problem with Singaporean girls is that they have a very high upkeep cost. Many feel that they deserve so much from you. Being in Singapore makes you feel unattractive, because it's harder to get an attractive girl to look at you. But it's not you - it's simply that they have higher expectations!

America is much more ethnically diverse than Singapore, so there are many types of girls. They're all cute, pretty, attractive, in their own ways, so it boils down to what *type* of girl you are interested in, instead of how good you expect your girl to look. A girl could be really hot but "not the kind" for most of your peers - so she doesn't grow stuck up thinking that she's on the top of a pyramid.

And Singaporean girls are actually very racist. Heck, I could even get along with the girls from London.

Another thing I don't like about Singaporean girls is that most are lacking in culture. A good number of them are buying into Korean fashion nowadays - which I think is kind of stupid - like, come on, we're more prosperous than the Koreans for god's sake - they should be the ones aspiring to be us. Hell, I know a number of Koreans and I even feel superior to them (man, I'm sounding racist!) I'm a NS deserter but I'm still proud to be Singaporean! Compare them to their European counterparts. European girls are sophisticated and refined, and they know how to dress well! Go on their streets wearing hotpants/short-shorts, slippers and spaghetti top and you'll look like a whore.

Another good number of Singaporean girls have a very myopic scope of life experiences. Take one girl and compare her to the next and you can find few differences. "Oh I came from X secondary school, Y JC. In my free time I did A and B: I was from A and B CCAs. Lately I'm learning how to drive. On weekends I go to dance at Z. I like to go to Orchard. What am I up now? Chinese New Year. Oh, I'd love to travel. I want to go to Japan/Korea! I've been to Australia (or insert any other common place) and it's amazing blah blah..."

The girls I know here are amazing. There's a white girl who's the kendo club president and teaches Japanese! There's a Japanese girl who has photographic memory and she travels all around performing on the piano and winning awards - and her life is not so linear: she has 3-4 academic scholarships right now. There's a girl who started flying planes when she was 16, while many of us are still envying people who can drive. There are mathematics geniuses. There are engineering goddesses. The model I'm dating: she has published 2 books - she is a great writer and puts up the most engaging conversations. There's another Japanese girl who hated life in Tokyo, left to travel Europe, and then found that her heart lies with Portugal: so she settled down there, and started a traveler's hostel over there. There's a Spanish girl who was born in Israel, finished her "NS" then decided to go back to find her roots in Barcelona - now she is a writer residing there. The thing is, every one that I've met has a very different story to tell.

Minus point though... some angmohs do age really quickly. It depends on what kind of angmoh.

Not to bash Singaporean girls of course, there are great ones out there too. Just that statistically counting my experiences, the average one is... meh.