3rd week of June holidays

Finally a week without school at all! So sick of the extension of school days into the school holidays in terms of remedial and Design & Technology (D&T) coursework. Had a 14 hour sleep on Saturday night to end the real Term 2 Cycle. So now I have the time and energy to rest, finish up holiday homework, start a revision plan for Prelims, and get ready for another round (Term 3). This final half-year is going to be tense, especially if I'm going to have high aims to get into St. Andrews Junior College (SAJC; L1R5: 9 points). So far, SAJC is the only JC that I'm really impressed with. The rest of all the JCs (except a few which are all impossible to get in) look like an ordinary extension of a secondary school.

You must be wondering why I suddenly changed my direction from Diploma of Architecture to a JC again. It was because when I recieved a brochure of University College London, I was impressed by it. Then I realised there are more options with majors I can take. I may be interested in Urban Planning rather than Architecture, which Polytechnic doesn't have. So the first reason is there are more degrees/majors in university that I can choose from, where an A Level is more accepted, preferred, open up entries into more degrees/majors, and relevant than a Diploma with relevance to certain degrees only, and by the time you discover there is something more interesting to study, but with an irrelevant Diploma, it's too late and too bad. Even if you get accepted, the Diploma is wasted. Also, that can mean I have more time to consider what I really want to study in university. Second reason is that my Ultimate Goal in the end is a prestigious university education overseas, and an A Levels can guarantee that more than a Diploma, because that is what it is designed for in the first place. I'm not the kind whose goal is 'one-at-a-time'. I look towards the end of the journey. And I'd like to end up in any of these universities: Columbia University, University College London/London Business School, McGill University, University of California-Berkeley, University of Toronto, University of British Columbia, Ecole Normal Superieure, New York University, University of Tokyo, or, at the very least, National University of Singapore, although I can still broaden a little and accept good universities in Sydney, Melbourne, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, Seoul, German cities, Stockholm, and Helsinki. But to go via JC it'll be extremely stressful, and if I'm not doing well I'll be forced to repeat in either JC1 or A Levels. Despite the extended misery, it's only 2 years of getting overwith, and once I'm done, it's over. Compared to 3 years of 'playing' in polytechnic on an unsure route and have an unsure university prospect. I don't feel comfortable in polytechnic anyway, especially when I experienced it during the Poly Experience at Singapore Polytechnic last Wednesday. Yes, you tell me, 'but there are graduates from poly who succeeded in life' but how many percent is that? And I heard that even those who managed to get into university were struggling there, because what poly taught them are skills for the working world, not knowledge for entry into university. And those who don't get into university will have to live with low salaries ($1800-2000). Seriously the education system is awful in the sense that you have to make difficult decisions at such a young age, and all desicions yield huge consequences in your study years, your life, or both. So it's really hard to decide, but with a 'matrix', I'm sticking to JC. Wish me luck struggling from pre O Levels to A Levels to National Service. And that's a total of 5 years.