My PFP Experience - Or rather, how was poly?

It taste goo- wait, what were you talking about again? But this photograph actually shows actual food you can get from Ngee Ann. If I recall correctly, I got this meal from the Hot Plate stall at Makan Place or Monkey Palace. (inside joke)

I've held back on writing this blog post because I was trying to find the appropriate time to blog about it. But hey, I have a free afternoon today so why not start blogging. I'm probably gonna keep saving this as draft (I've made changes to this about 5 times now, wooow) until I'm done writing this ridiculously long post anyway. Now be warned, because I hardly took any pictures of the school itself so you'll have to use your imagination for some parts of this blog post.

To start of this post, let's describe my first day. I enrolled to Ngee Ann under the PFP -

NO NO NO. I'm not starting from that far back. I'm just gonna be talking about the school and classes in general because, ain't nobody got time to describe day one to day sometime somewhere in a blog post. It would take me a year to finish this! This post is mainly about the good and bad experiences I've had, starting with the bad ones first. Also I've already blogged about my first week in Ngee Ann, this post will be what happened from my second week to my last week. This is gonna be so challenging to sum up!! So I'll try a different style of blogging. I tried to be creative and change up the font a little and add a few picture references so maybe I'll start blogging like this (I probably won't - it's tiring). And besides, pictures wouldn't be appropriate for my "If I'm a cheater, you're a mosaic pixelation" rant posts.

So, let's talk about stuff that shocked me over my PFP year.

The Bad Experiences

The enrollment is horrible. You literally get like a few days to fill up forms and submit them to Ngee Ann and honestly, it's something all students have to deal with but man, they're really rushed when it comes to forcing you to join their poly.

And take note, if you're enrolling to Ngee Ann under the PFP program, you're going to get P.E. or what they call Sports & Wellness. It's basically a schedule they've made up for you where every three weeks you get to try a new sport. I've tried sports like badminton, basketball and even pilates (wasn't a pleasant experience) and they didn't tell you this, but we do have a NAPFA test at the final week of the Sports & Wellness module. Don't worry, whether you pass or fail the test, it won't affect your chance of getting into year one. Man, if they started to count fitness as a criteria to get promoted to the next year, I'd be a failure in life. Also, after the PFP Year (You've suffered sports for a year), you're still gonna have Sports & Wellness for year one for another half a year, isn't that great? I'm talking about the sports program because one of the reason for me escaping 'O' levels and joining the PFP program was because I wanted to escape exercise, and also combined humanities and the teachers in my secondary school. Well most of them I like, its just some of them in particular someHow get on my nerves a liTtle. At least I managed to escape 2/3 of those stuff. I'd go on ranting about secondary school but those days over! Peace. Wait, I'm not done with this post yet. Continuing on...

I'd like to talk about the camp that I attended. I know I blogged about it previously saying that it was a good experience, or did I? I don't believe I mentioned this but during the camp, you're mixed with a bunch of people from other schools and I found it really hard to bond with someone of a completely different personality and interest from me. Which is why as of today, well not today but, since months ago, we hardly talked. I don't even think I recognize them anymore if I ever see them in school. They're all focused on their new classmates. Well it could be that I got left out and that they just created a new WhatsApp group to focus on their own clique but that's none of my own business. But I'm just saying, the camp is all fun and games but I don't think the people you meet there will be the ones who will stay with you your entire poly life. Also, I felt left out most of the time because they're all active people while I'm the stay-at-home kind of guy. We have nothing in common and I guess I just died out of their lives. It was so difficult to talk to them or voice out my opinion and because I never got the chance to or maybe I never tried hard enough to. I'll stop talking now this is getting depressing. Basically if you can't get the hint, I'm badmouthing the camp. I'd say, go if you want to experience what it's like to meet people different from you. Don't go if you find it difficult to talk to people who are very different from you.

Another thing I have to complain about is the canteen, my god! If you thought secondary school was bad, Ngee Ann is twice as bad. It's going to be so crowded if you go there late and there's hardly any seat for you to eat so you're going to have to share tables or move on to plan B, taking-away your food and moving somewhere else to eat. Oh, did I mention you're not supposed to eat in class? Come on! We're old enough to be responsible to eat in class and we don't get the privilege to do so... But I do understand that nobody wants their class to smell like fries. Ngee Ann is building a new canteen though which should ease the overcrowding a little but who knows when it will be done.

Also, this thing annoys me a lot and that is Ngee Ann is a school that loves to save energy. The thing is, some students want to stay in class during their lunch break but guess what? You ain't getting no air conditioning during the one hour break. MELT AND SUFFER. This is a major no-no for me even though I can't argue that I'm right but it's air conditioning. We all know how warm Singapore is, why can't you keep it on for an extra hour? It won't kill you as long as there's somebody in the class using the air conditioning. Clearly by this age and time there needs to be some system to motion detect a human in the classroom to let it automatically switch on air conditioning. But hey, we gotta conserve energy!

Moving on to talk about the classes, I was enrolled under the ICT PFP class and you know, being in an IT class you'd expect it to be mainly focused on IT modules. Nope. You get a bunch of other modules that kind of have something to do with IT but are rather useless?

Let me list down the modules I got for semester one and two and you'll see for yourself what are the painful modules that come along with your fun IT modules:

Semester 1

• Bridging English 1 (Basically English, part 1)
• Basic Computer Literacy (Microsoft Office skills & Basic computer knowledge)
• Fundamentals of Data Analysis 1 (Learning to deal with data [samples, probability], part 1)
• Math Fundamentals 1 (Basically Math, part 1)
• Personal Development (Kind of like CME/Moral Education lessons in Secondary school)
• Web Publishing (HTML - Make your own website & Learn more about web page coding)

While you've escaped the dreadful subjects in secondary school such as Geography, Social Studies and maybe afternoon assembly class lessons (yuck), part of it has come back to haunt you again. I personally feel in semester 1, the most useless module would have to be personal development. I honestly learnt nothing from it. And I didn't get a good grade for it either, because I have no social/group working skills so too bad for me.

So to generally describe the modules, English is what you'd expect, the usual learning of grammar, adjectives, nouns, how to use tenses etc. You'd also be tested by a comprehension, composition and oral presentation. Oral presentation is a little different from the oral in secondary school. You are to instead prepare a speech of about five minutes and present it to the class what your topic is about.

Computer Literacy basically teaches you some office skills you already know such as how to open a word document. (Yeah...) And also some of the more advance skills you won't need to know such as mail merge. You'll also be taught more on parts of the computer and how they function such as knowing what's a CPU & RAM, what is the fastest storage device, describe the input, processing, output cycle etc. In terms of how it's graded, it's a written assessment (like list the parts of a computer etc) and a mini project.

Data Analysis is pretty much self explanatory. You'll learn about how to use data and classify them and make them useful such as making them into pie charts or histogram etc. It is also tested by a written paper with questions. Math Fundamentals is ... basically secondary school math. It's sort of a refresh lesson and nobody should have any issue with this.

Personal development is one crazy module I have to say. It attempts to squeeze in anger management, time management, self esteem and all those other junk to make sure you learn the basic skills of life. It also tells you you're wrong about everything and that their theory on life is correct. Most useless module of the semester. If you liked CME in secondary school maybe you'll like this module but to me, I could have done without this. The way they test you is through projects and a written paper which requires you to state your stand on who is right in a certain scenario. (Based on things you've learned)

Web Publishing teaches you more about web page creating, you'll be tested on how to write a web page (you literally WRITE your web page out on a paper - not draw!). You'll learn how to write web pages and how to design/customize them to your own liking. You'll also learn how web pages work, how to organize files and a little bit about the Internet.

Semester 2

• Bridging English 2 (It's English again hurray...)
• Culture & Community (I'll explain this later)
• Fundamentals of Data Analysis 2 (Probability, probability etc.)
• Math Fundamentals 2 (Math... And a little A-Math)
• Problem Solving (Pseudocodes & Coding?)
• Understand the Web (Diagrams - Explain later)

I'll skip the modules I have mention above because they' generally the same. (English, Math and Data Analysis). The only difference I can spot is the Math got harder. It introduces one of an A Math topic that I, well didn't take because I took Principles of Accounting and that is Binomial Theorem.

Culture and Community let's you learn more about well, culture and how foreigners adapt to coming to Singapore. You'll learn things like culture shock and the difference between culture and community. But let me tell you one thing, after this module, I still don't know the differences. So I'll just safely say, they don't teach you that.

Problem Solving is kind of like coding. You have to write out lines of code or pseudocodes to solve a problem they give you. You get to experience what it is like to actually do coding. I'd say this was fun for me since I learnt something from this module and it's coding. I love coding but I never bothered to learn it out of school because I'm lazy. Yeah...

Understand the Web... where do I begin. If I had to rank this module it would be the 2nd lowest, with the lowest being Personal Development. Now what do you understand from the module name? I understand that it is more about learning about how the Internet works and maybe how protocols function etc. Maybe something about web security? While I did learn a little about those things, guess what this module was mainly focused on? Diagrams, diagrams and more diagrams. You might as well rename this module to "diagrams and some web". You are required to annoyingly learn how to use a Activity Flow Diagram (AFD), Flowchart, Mindmap and other junk you'll probably never use in life except for the written test for this module. Diagrams, my foot.

You're generally tested on projects (presentations, speeches) and written tests (almost the same as secondary school, they test you on basic knowledge).

Just adding on here, the lecturers are still like secondary school teachers. They do nag, they do chase, and they're not letting you lose at all. So much for every secondary school teacher bragging about how in the future nobody is going to chase you like they do.

Also, there are days where class starts at 8am.

Now that I've brainwashed you to not join the PFP program there are SOME good points in it, and you'll probably regret taking O Levels. Or maybe not, since I suck at convincing people.

The Good Experiences

This is going to be so bias but who cares, this is my blog and I'm entitled to my own opinions. So long as I don't insult anyone in the process I shouldn't get sued for anything. Well, I'm insulting my modules but my modules can't sue me can they. ;)

Anyway, the good experiences I've had at Ngee Ann under the PFP programme, well there's plenty.

I've learnt more about polytechnic life and how the style of teaching is at polytechnic. Its basically mainly focused on projects and assignments and not all paper based. This could be a good or bad thing for each individual depending on their preferences.

Also, I'm lucky to have an amazing class where everyone is so bonded together. It's a class where for the first time in my life, I actually feel comfortable just being around them and never in my entire schooling life (well maybe in kindergarten) have I been comfortable around my classmates. N-E-V-E-R. Even in primary and secondary school I hardly talked to anyone, and nobody talked to me. That's how it works. But in polytechnic I feel like I have something in common with everyone, and I can actually hold a conversation with someone. I'd say that pretty much explains to you what I mean by comfortable. Now I'm not saying I don't get along with my primary/secondary schoolmates, it's just that, we have nothing in common. I'm probably the only person in the class who loves technology while the others are focused on business or engineering. But that's fine, I'm the weird one. But hey, if you join PFP you might just meet the perfect classmates. Queen Taylor!

Apart from the chance that you might meet the best classmates of your lives, you also get to study what you want. Gone are those useless subjects like Mother Tongue or Social Studies, in comes the IT modules. You finally get to use your phones and laptops in class! Freedom is great. You also study in a comfortable air conditioned environment with a longer lunch break of an hour. In secondary school it was a half an hour break for me and that's hardly enough time for anyone to have a proper lunch. If you're lucky, you might just get a three hour break where you can pretty much leave school and have a meal elsewhere.

And guess what? Gone are those dreadful stairs. In Ngee Ann, you get to take the lift! Sure, it's not something that big but it helps to make you lazier. Oh, but the downside is Ngee Ann is built on a hill so, yeah... that hill is probably gonna be your worse nightmare every morning and evening, and maybe during lunch break.

Now talking about lunch, there's a large variety of food ranging from economical fried rice, kway teow to chicken rice, sushi and even popular fast food outlets like kfc, macdonald, subway, mos burger and old chang kee... old chang kee's squid stick is amazing, so is their cheesy meatball. It also has my favorite dish, fried carrot cake! Let me tell you, I'm obsessed with carrot cake. Ngee Ann has both the egg fried carrot cake as well as the square block version of carrot cake. Once you try it you'll love it for the rest of your lives. I LIED. That photo is actually from a kopitiam outlet, somewhere. But the part about Ngee Ann having square carrot cake isn't a lie though. It's available at both the popular canteens Munch and Makan Place. Both are great but I prefer the one at Makan Place. Now, if only I had a picture of it...

Lessons are also a breeze if you're interested in the modules. It's kind of like studying what you want to learn. That's the only way I can explain it. For instance, if you like web designing and the module is about coding a website I think it'd be pretty interesting for you to learn something that could come in useful in whatever out-of-school projects you are working on or trying to work on. You also get to try a new learning experience because in your entire school life, you've been trained to study, memorize and spit the information out on a paper. In polytechnic, it's the same. Except, you get a lot more assignments and projects where most of them are to be done in groups. Now, I'm not a big fan of group-work but I have to admit, it can get fun and rowdy, but at the same time it's tiring to have to stay after school to finish a project. Which is why there's (cough) google docs (cough). Certain projects are boring, and some are fun. It all depends on your personal preferences but be careful not to be too relaxed as these projects and assignments hold a high percentage of your marks alongside your written paper marks. One slip up and you could end up affecting your GPA.

Whatever the hell that is. In the PFP programme, we were only told about the GPA but never explained on what GPA actually meant. To me, it's merely a number ranging from 0 to 4 and 4 is the number nobody can get. The good thing about the PFP programme is you can mess up a little here and there as it doesn't affect your overall grade in polytechnic but you can't fail the programme because you'll get kicked out and be forced to take O Level, at least that's what the old ha- one of the lecturers said. Seriously, they're still using the same scare tactic. Its like I'm in secondary school again where every teacher is like "you better not fail or you'll retain!!11". I mean, it's fine if you warn your students but don't use it everyday as a threatening weapon. It just gets annoying. Really annoying.

Well I'm running out of ideas but to sum it up, the good thing is I had more fun in the polytechnic than I would have in a secondary school. Also they have lifts that bring you up to the desired floor of your choice and come on guys, lifts were never a privilege in secondary school for me and I had to climb those bloody stairs everyday to the fourth floor. Man, that was awful.

...

Alright, I know I said there were plenty of good experiences I've had from joining PFP but hey, that's just a few that came into my mind. Now, it might look bad since my bad experiences take up like half of this blog post but everyone has different opinions on whether or not to take PFP. You might not want to take the easy way out and want or want to stay with your classmates in secondary school or maybe you like a paper slip of paper which states your O Level grades but don't let others affect which path you take. Take whichever pathway you think is better for you. For me I chose PFP because I wanted to relax a little but still get into polytechnic. Also I'm tired of memorizing boring stuff that are useless to me in life. I'd rather memorize 500 lines of codes that might come in useful for programming in the future. Besides, O Levels are stressful and I've had enough of teachers screaming at their students to "inspire" them to get A1s for everything. Also I wanna meet the people who have the same interest as me and finally be able to hold a conversation with someone. To sum it up, I had fun, I was chilled back and relaxed and I think I'm getting to year one. (probably)

I actually did better than I had expected. And yes I did graduate guys, the celebration just hasn't happened yet. Oh and remember to turn on SMS notification guys, they actually sent out GPA grading to those who enabled the SMS notification. You see, Ngee Ann doesn't tell you guys these kind of stuff and you have to go figure it out for yourselves. They just aren't efficient in anything which is why I'll still be in Bali (I'm flying for like, the first time in my life) on the first day of their camp. But its their fault for informing us so late. In fact, I haven't even got my enrollment package which is why I was wondering why I haven't technically "graduated" yet. Oh well, at least I got the email today about the enrollment. Wow those school fees are-

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lol. peace.
totally overusing that Californian FB Italic font in every picture