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The 400m's over. I got third in my heat with 57.6 secs which is a personal best but it really isn't very encouraging since we're only about 2-3 months away from nationals. Towards the last 50m haha I think I totally couldn't move my legs or arms anymore and just had to struggle on and I almost got overtaken.
Oh well just got to train harder and train better. There's only a few months left to the final thing and I'll either make it or just fall short. Ah the only limit to ourselves is time time time. We always need more time. All we need is time and we can go as far as we will ourselves.
And yeah 4770 second tag for my last year in RI.
Notice that things happen around our lives and definitely we don't agree with some things that happen to us or things which we're subjected to. We have a choice either to conform to it and just undergo what these things have in plan for us or to step forward and bring it down.
Take the Raffles Programme for example - especially the sec4 curriculum whereby most of us students are trying desperately to survive and hang on and trying not to screw up. Okay I'm speaking from a prefect's point of view so maybe it's not that true. But yeah the simple question is there, posed to us: How can we feel for the school and feel for our friends and support them all when support is needed, and feel the Rafflesian spirit in us, when most of the time we're trying very hard to complete our work and forcefully study for the next coming test which is always never far away, and trying to get enough sleep out of the long long nights. Quoting Tom in one of his earlier blog posts, "RI rocks but RP sucks."
Maybe it does train us well for the fact that we'd be super versatile in all tested subjects and we'd know how to survive in tough society out there. Yes that bit is true. But whatever happened to the holistic education we were supposed to have, as stated in the goals of RP. Instead we're scrambling for time where everyone have no choice but not to bother about extra things like match support which they might consider unimportant compared to their studies or foundation commitments.
RI has many many talented people but we're sometimes possibly hindered by our responsibilities to our academics. What RP is trying to do is to produce great thinkers, leaders and pioneers but yet what it is actually achieving is just making everyone into some sort of a mechanical product of the system - people can swim, run, dance, paint, act, play all sorts of musical instruments, yet eventually they can't go as far as they possibly can, and instead know how to study well, survive well, in this society which speaks of certification and basic academic requirements.
True enough, life starts out as a form of science - where we grapple the foundations, know and practise our values, strive to achieve foundations in our studies and slowly learn more about the workings of the world and society in whole.
However, life slowly becomes an art - where we take our own different paths and explore the ends of whichever way we go. The world celebrates diversity and from this celebration of diversity we can see people going far and vast in many different fields. Humanity is then made versatile and all-knowing. Whether it be careers in sciences, business, social work, anything, everyone goes different ways, and we take pride in our work for we have our unique identity and purpose.
I'm not sure which part of life RP is trying to achieve. Maybe more things can be done to further clarify its purposes and then the students will be clearer about it. But yes after all, we want to be thinkers, leaders and pioneers in every field. We don't want to be factory workers with the same style and same purpose. RI should totally move away from the civil servant stereotypical image haha.
My arguments may have lots of flaws and may be horribly biased; after all it's what i feel anyway. Haha okay now I really need to do my math lest I start failing. We still have to study no matter what, for we have a responsibility towards it. Onward Raffles.
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