I think its fair for me to explain why I decided to choose SMU in the first place. Mainly because of its location. It located in a prime central location in the city and I didn’t want to travel to some ulu corner of Singapore everyday for my classes so the choice was pretty clear. My mother wasn’t a fan of me staying in a dormitary even though I wanted to give it a try. Meh.
Besides, SMU specialized in Business which is basically what I wanted to study. I didn’t know that it was also a place where the rich parents sent their kids caused the school fees are much more exorbitant than our fellow buddies NTU and NUS. So in short SMU was for the rejects from elites schools that couldn’t enter medicine or law in NUS but the good new is that we sure built a reputation for being a fun and exciting campus life.
Studying at SMU was quite an experience for me. There are both good and bad times. Mostly bad I’d say.
During my first year as freshman, like many others I signed up for orientation camps. Personally, I signed up for 2 camps, the Freshmen Orientation Camp (FOC) as well as the Business school camp.
Freshmen Orientation Camp
FOC was underwhelming at best because I was in the last batch so apparently in this batch, the organizing committee decided to group people using their phone numbers. Guess what happened?
Basically, everyone who was a foreigner ended up in this batch and my team had almost 80% of foreigners.
Its alright, we can be inclusive. Little did you know; my team dynamics was so awful I wanted to leave the camp I swear. Most people don’t want to participate in the games and heck there was a girl in my team that brought her fucking luggage to the camp. SHE BROUGHT HER HAIRDRYER FOR FUCK SAKE. Wow. In fact, during the muddy games, I wasn’t surprised when many girls opted out. Umm seriously why are you even here. Oh wait, it was compulsory for all freshmen to join this camp, so I guess they had no choice.
Business School Camp
I thought business camp would be much more fun so when I met my assigned group, they seemed fun. Or at least I thought.
I’d like to highlight how terrible it was during the games they played during business camp. There’s this game that requires us to slide along the circular bench and play rock paper scissors (winner gets to continue sliding and try to continue his streak against the opponent’s team). Seems fun. So how do they make you “slide” along the bench? They used detergent and water to make the benches slippery so you can sort of “slide” as you played. It’s all fun and games until I realized my thighs were starting to have abrasions from playing the game. The detergent was fucking burning our skin. You know how detergent is meant to soften your clothes during washing? It was literally doing that to our skin and the contact with the fabric started creating abrasions on our skin.
Apparently, no one thought this through when they decided detergent would be a good idea to use during the games. I was fucking enraged I swear. The girls in our team all had the same issue because we were all wearing shorts. When we raised the issue to the instructors, they simply told us to wash the detergent off and shrugged. There’s literally zero accountability. Wow.
We did feedback to them not to use detergent but honestly, I get the sense that they didn’t really give a fuck about us.
During Business Camp, we had an optional clubbing night at Zouk. My business camp mates agreed to attend the night together, so I was anticipating a fun night ahead. Let me tell you how wrong I was. They met at Zouk at like 10pm? They appeared and so did I. We were given coupons to exchange for drinks so that’s what we did. After sitting for 30 mins, someone said “I’m going to rush for the last train home”. WOW. REALLY? Then suddenly the whole group agreed and left Zouk at 11pm. 11 FUCKING O’CLOCK. Who even does that? Oh right, nerds. I should have known. So there, best virgin clubbing experience EVER.
Oh god, the hypocrisy in SMU is so fucking real.
You know how you sign up for these camps so that you can make some friends before school starts. I’m off to a great start can’t you see? You know what’s funny? I still continued to hang with the friends I made during business camp, but I realized how pointless it was. So, the first year we gathered to celebrate everyone’s birthday yada yada yada (including mine so that’s cool). Then I realized for the next few years, they only celebrated birthdays for people who are more popular??? I question why the fuck am I doing this, so I basically didn’t appear at gatherings when I was in Year 4.
I did make friends during classes in Year 1 and they sort of formed a clique and met everyday at the library to study and stuff which was cool. People were sleeping in the library and being proud about it. I didn’t understand. I made a friend called X and he was super humble and nice when we first met. Until he changed. He decided to run for org comms for the popularity?? Maybe he was trying to step out of his comfort zone, but I was pretty appalled at the lengths he went to just to hang with the popular kids.
Oh, maybe he was trying to make his portfolio look better as well. I think if you ran for organizing committee for any entity in SMU, it looks good on your portfolio because you exhibit good leadership and garner significant support among st your peers since they have to vote for you to get the position in the organizing committee. Perhaps that’s why he did that. I fully understand though. That’s why I started to distance myself from him. I think it’s partly also because since he has so ‘many’ friends to hang out with, I’m fine with just staying the hell alone since I was a nobody LOL
Over time, I’ve made many Hi-Bye friends. You know, those ex-group mates you walk by along the school corridors and spontaneously say ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye’ to? Yup, those.
OGL Interview for Business Camp
Even though I had a bad experience during Business Camp in year 1, I still went to sign up as an orientation group leader during Year 2 cause a friend thought it would be fun. We did.
You know what they told us to do during the interview? SEDUCE A WATER BOTTLE.
They weren’t kidding. They cued the music and me and my partner were just taken aback as we stood there like statues not knowing if this was a joke. I almost walked out the room right there and then LOL. What kind of interview is this even? I mean if they broke the ice a bit beforehand, it would have been fine but they didn’t. I hope this helps you shed light on what kind of people business school people are like? Pretty ‘fun’ huh?
Projects
I never knew working in group was so hard until I got to uni.
Over a span of 4 year, I worked on more than 30 projects and it was dreadful. During my first two years in SMU, some project groups meet almost every fucking day? Cause we were inefficient like that. I’d sometimes say I’m not free cause its honestly pointless to meet if everyone is not done with their respective portions for the project. Some people don’t think so. It gets better during Year 3 and 4 cause our GPA is almost set in stone so there’s no point trying to save anything. *cues sad music*
Mod Bidding Systems
You know how in SMU we can bid for mods that suit your schedule and stuff?
It’s a bloody chore when your group of friends want to bid to enter the same mod together. I mean it was fun at first but over time, I found it tiring to spend so much ‘e credits’ just to get into the same course as people that you might or might not be close to. In fact, people share internal reviews of each professor for respective courses so that you can decide if you want to go for their course. In particular, it tells you how stingy or generous they are with grades. Clearly, I’m not a fan because I didn’t have that time or energy to discriminate professors for their teaching/grading styles, so I simply decided to bid for modules on my own.
You know why these people tend to bid together? Because they want to form their own groups (researched that the professor in question allows students to assign their own groups) so that they can get the same grade. A+ preferably. Insane but its true. So when people say SMU is competitive, you have no fucking clue.
Fun Fact: Did I mention at some point in Year 2, I wanted to drop out of SMU? My grades were garbage and honestly, I wasn’t sure if I could graduate. But my mother insisted that I completed my degree since I was already halfway there. So, I did. Thankfully, I did graduate but not with flying colors cause I’m clearly not as ‘smart’ as my peers. P.S I literally emailed my school counselor “Should I just quit school? My grades are really bad” I think this was the first time she received such an email.
Class part
In SMU, we have something called class part. So, it means you are encouraged to raise your hand and give your opinions in class and for every time you speak, you get a point which will be recorded by the class TA (teacher’s assistant). Can you imagine how many people pointlessly raising their hands to give an opinion which may or may not be relevant to the question? A LOT. The TA can moderate, and filter is the point is valid but so many times we have to listen to so many points of view (similar even) and it goes on and on.
Ultimately, class part is implemented so that the class is not just one-sided where the professor simply just keeps sharing but many students seem to force themselves to speak in class just to get the class part points. Mind you, class part can go up to 40%-50% of your grade so…I guess everyone must speak whether pointless or not. I’m not really a big fan of class part as you can see, I try to but if I can I wouldn’t unless I have some substantial point I ABSOLUTELY HAVE to talk about. *Refer to ‘voices’ post previously for more context.
Conclusion
That’s probably why I had such a ‘great’ time in SMU. The people. The system. The environment. I think I wasn’t equipped with the right mentality when I went to uni….you know how they say uni is like stepping into the real world? Yeah I understood that first hand. The competitiveness is fucking insane. My time there was truly unforgettable. Was I glad I graduated? Yes. Am I proud to be from SMU? Yes. Did I enjoy my days there? Probably not. That said, I’m not supposed to say anything bad about my school so I’d like to add some good points…like volunteering for Inspirar camp as a facilitator and…oh, there are many tables and benches for you to study. Yup. Good luck buddy.
theniecextn. 
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