My Short Testimonial for SCE.

I was very honoured to be invited to write a line or two last week, to be featured during the Tea Reception for SCE applicants and on the Alumni Website. The main aim was to inspire and guide the freshmen on education at NTU SCE, and to recount my memorable experience in SCE. A difficult task at first, it turned out that a couple of lines were not enough for me. Below is a preview to my lil' contribution. Hopefully it'll be useful to potential NTU SCE freshmen who will not be able to make it for the Tea Reception. =)

During my Convocation last July, the guest speaker, Mr Chan Yeng Kit, CEO of IDA Singapore, reminded us of our decision to place the bets of our future in the IT industry shortly after the bust of the dot-com bubble. He portrayed us as brave souls, passionate about IT. And he painted the future of us as future professionals in the dynamic and exciting industry, where we can make a difference across the society. He also presented past statistics that half of the IT-graduates will take up non-IT professions. I guess I have chosen the path of the other half - following my heart where I think the money will be and equipped with what NTU SCE had offered me.

Having "endured" through the four-year course, rumored to be the toughest in NTU, gave me a great sense of accomplishment, although it was just the beginning. The balanced course structure gave us a chance to enter either the hardware or software domain, and ample time to get exposed to both domains before deciding where our interest lied.

The SCE course emphasized on hands-on. I have fond memories of those days when we went around carrying our 'black box’ and doing wire-wrapping for our microprocessor lab at the benches. The software modules were structured in a way to let us pick up different programming languages and implement the software engineering concepts.

The SCE course was not only able training in technical skills, but also in Communication skills. It was not only about writing resumes and letters, but also about presenting ourselves and cultivating the entrepreneurship in us. There were plenty of opportunities to do presentations, which is a core-skill in the working world.

Despite the recent hoo-ha over the quality of NTU lecturers, it was never a problem to us. Foreign accents are something we must learn to get used to, especially when we live in a cosmopolitan world. Furthermore, the SCE lecturers were always approachable. Just to name a few: Dr. Yow Kin Choong, who would conduct extra tutorial lessons for us and answered all our queries. Dr. Man Zhihong and Dr. Srikanthan, whose lectures I enjoyed most as they were clear, concise, and straight to the point. AP Nicholas Vun, who would go the extra mile to sit down with his students to debug their final year projects, and imparted technical skills which we would not have been able to learn from books.

On a side note, at SCE I also found my love and a group of wonderful friends. We supported each other throughout the course. Despite the hectic school life, we had the time to contribute to the society by being volunteers in the Welfare Services Club and made the most out of our SCE experience.

Finally, what sets a SCE graduate apart from the rest is the problem-solving skills, independent continuous learning skills, and the motivation to excel, or commonly known as the "BIA" attitude.