half a year has passed yet again, time is really flying too fast for me to handle
results for the previous sem was worse than previously, to the point where i had to meet a dean member to discuss my falling grades below 3.5. the guy himself wasn’t actually keen to meet us failures and just told me that he could only recommend dropping a course, not force us to…it was somewhat discouraging and i fretted even more.
this sem felt like a shambles after i received the results…i felt really conflicted as i did relatively well for the acc modules but not the acs modules. somehow i was able to pull up the acc grades but suffered a further dip in the other
acc 3 was taught by a very senior teacher who was quite knowledgeable…it also turned out that there were quite a number of maths calculations which i felt more comfortable in. audit was very dry and the teacher didn’t really make us interested in the topic…somehow i was able to scrape past the case studies in the exam to save my gpa.
however the main saviour was surprisingly astronomy. rather than seeing it as an easy mod to score an A in, i decided to appreciate the wonders of our night skies through these lessons. it wasn’t ckmpulsory to turn up for the mass lectures but i went for the 1st half since the eee lecturer was very engaging. somehow i managed to get full marks (i think) for the 1st quiz. 2nd haf was less interesting as it focused more on star formations and etc and i didn’t really do well in the 2nd quiz. i made myself practice the mcq qns in the question bank and as it turned out, the large majority of the final exam were from there. it was really fascinating to learn about our universe and i really appreciated the huge effort put in for us to even exist in the first place. it really made me feel very insignificant compared to the vastness of the whole plane of existence, but i appreciated what God had done to create this for us to find out.
the actuarial mods were worse off…i am forced to come to the conclusion that i am not cut out for such an intense course. initially i thought it played to my strengths but as it turned out, it was more than i could handle. turns out that stats isn’t my strong suit urgh…
act econs was more tricky than i thought…the teacher was admittedly a very smart guy with some formula named after him?! it was basically economics with a few extra stuff thrown in, but somehow the finals was some very hard shit…the past year papers were so much more easier smh
and models was an ultimate killer…i certainly didn’t expect to actually fail a fking paper but that was what i saw reflected in my grade. i felt seriously confused as i thought i could scrape at least a pass…the first lecturer was my stats teacher last time and he was quite good in explaining the concepts, but i was unable to put the knowledge learnt in the mid-term quiz. the next half of the sem was taught by prof bala, and for this time i put in more effort to understand the concepts taught, by summarizing the notes into a more compact form. overall i felt i put in the most effort for this subject and somehow the results did not speak for themselves.
moving on to my internship. the hr person baited me to work until august when most of the ppl were ending in july wtf…however with reservist i only have to work for 11 weeks. it turns out that i have 4 more weeks left lol. i was pretty apprehensive on the 1st day, which was perfectly natural. munich re occupies a building right beside fullerton hotel, making it very accessible for me to travel to suntec then back to home. if i were to be brutally honest, i was completely lost during the 1st week: i didn’t know shit about excel functions and struggled to run the requisite data analysis. the data cleaning was harder than i thought as it involved the setting of the correct dates–something which i didn’t realise until later in the 2nd week. it was pretty cool looking at how the macro was able to generate all the results based on the raw data input.
incidentally, the macro was designed by a previous actuarial senior who had graduated a few years ago. i was also really lucky to have the president of the actuarial science club sitting right next to me, and he really helped me with the various difficulties i faced. he also gave me much-needed advice on exchange itself and strongly encouraged me to go. as a result i began to see the exchange as an opportunity to have fun for an extended period of time before the drudgery of working life sets in. i am still thinking about it but it seems like a good deal…hopefully my results are good enough lol. also, he also helped me to plan my curriculum in such a way that I could clear potential modules in exchange period. there seems to be a course that i can’t get but i have to make do. i was also tasked to do a report on the healthcare system in the philippines, which was quite challenging in the amount of information avaliable. however it turned out to be an eye-opening experience as i had no idea how it worked. ‘eye-opening’ has turned out to be a catchphrase somehow since i kept using it to describe my experience at work lmao
once a while we would have lunches with the senior ppl and i had one with my direct supervisors. it wasn’t that awkward as i thought although i was put into a spot when i was asked to guess everyone’s age. other than that it was quite cool to hear how they entered the actuarial field and into the company itself.
and now onto reservist…
the passage of time of 1 year is both short and long. it was a welcome break from the monotony of work and in a deep corner of my heart it was interesting to see them again…i can’t believe i’m saying this but a part of me missed the simpler times back then even though it was tiring as fk.
1st day was a tactical march from camp through ocs and the ‘spider bridge’ to the indoor range and back again…it got exhausting on the way back as we went on the rollercoaster trail in the ocs compound. 2nd day was a refresher on attack drills and ippt which i managed to get silver somehow despite shitty static station results…the running before training paid off as i reached a pb of less than 9.50 somehow wtf. 3rd day was the worst: we practiced close quarter fights in the large simulated town and set off for a conventional mission. going uphill was now more shag than ever and i felt horribly out of place from the belukar that we were so acquainted with. we did a total of 3 times before we had a much needed rest. doing all these again had me wondering how i managed to pull through the 2 years back then. building clearing was at dusk and it was pretty ok even though i was declared dead upon reaching the building. however, someone lost a smoke ring and we had to come back the next day to find…it was fruitless as that thing was so small and inconspicuous urgh. there was live firing in buildings as well which was done quite quickly in the morning. as an incentive, ppl who got silver and above were able to out pro early ahaha
i don’t know how the 2nd half of the year will be like but i hope for the best
A solo soliloquy. 