My experiences during JXP and reflection on my current life--Xu Bohan

The final glimpse of the River Valley High School mingled with a faint tiredness and reluctance to leave. The five-day JC visit has just finished, but the experiences in class, in the playground and in the canteen with my buddy and friends are still clear in my mind. There are three things touched me profoundly during this experience: their busy and tiring life, and in contrast their energetic state of mind, and finally our privilege to be provided so convenient facilities and considerate services.

During our five days staying there, they have three exams to take and another one in the following Tuesday. I am a bit surprised of their tight schedule that they even do not have adequate time to prepare for the test. What the teacher covered on the previous day could be included in the test on the following day. There is no full-day break for them to prepare for the test as my high school occasionally did. In addition to test, school begins quite early and the morning classes proceed one after another, almost without intervals between two classes. Moreover, unlike Chinese high school students who are getting used to taking a nap after lunch, JC students don’t have such time. Shuttling from one class to another constantly is what their everyday routine is like.

On the contrary, students there are always awake and energetic both during and after the classes. Most of them get up around six a.m. every day, which schedule they kept for more than ten years. Unadjusted to this schedule, I was not entirely awake in the morning classes and was rather exhausted in the afternoon. Every day on the bus back to our hostel, we were silent because of lacking strength to chat but nap on the seats. My buddy told me that during the period busy with co-curriculum activities, she could sleep as late as two am in the midnight, resulting in only four hours of sleep. How could they ‘survive’ in such afflicting and exhausting schedule? But indeed, Singapore students make it. In view of this, I admire their strength of will to keep energetic in this so packed daily routine and also feel pitiful for them to be a sleep-deprived generation.

Meanwhile, I feel it privileged to be provided such living and study condition: living inside the campus with no more than ten minutes’ walk to the lecture theatre, varieties of restaurants providing diverse flavors, convenience stores located nearby the classroom, as well as gyms and swimming pools opposite to the hostel. We are the pioneer batch to have the chance living inside the campus directly during the bridging course, facilitating us to immerge into the university atmosphere, but with a less packed schedule and less studies burden compared to college students. I genuinely feel that bridging course period is incomparably wonderful, given that our friends in China are still striving for the university entrance examination and local JC students are ceaselessly engaged in their busy studies and activities.

In a nut shell, despite further integrating into Singapore culture through the in-depth immersion, I feel more of our privilege as scholars. Cherish my live now and make endeavor!