Design Project volume 10000000000

Yesterday (and the first 4 hours of today) was one of the most stressful days of my life. My group mates and I finished our group meeting at around 3:30 AM.

Yeah lor, 3:30 AM and I am still in one of the benches in engin, stressing my brain cells out in calculating the axial forces and buckling resistances and whatnot of our proposed strutting system design. At the same time I was feeling very angry because we had to stay out late, because of the cut-throat competition in class, and because of the stressful nature of life in Singapore in general. I mean, yeah, no wonder Singapore is so progressive and booming and everything, a great feat for a country that's just a puny dot on the world map...but to the expense of its people having an onerous means of living. Everything is fast-paced, that sometimes I feel if I try to stop and smell the roses, I'd get run over by people going about their lives in the fast lane.

Anyway, we had our second presentation a while ago. That's why I found some time to blog, because my group mates and I are trying to catch our breath after all the rush before the presentation. It didn't go well though, and it was even disastrous. Yeah, even though we meet everyday to discuss. Even though we worked very hard. But it's okay, the professors were very understanding, because they can see our efforts despite the fact that none of us has taken any structural steel design modules before, which would have taught us all the basics in what we're designing for. So basically it's self-learning from scratch, and in one week's time. (Last week was for the geotechnical part, and for that we did well).

While presenting, it was apparent we were doing very poorly. We were the last ones to present and the groups before us presented stuff that we didn't even know should be included. So even before our turn we already knew we were going to "die". Surprisingly, the supervisors didn't scold us nor demean us. They were very sympathetic actually hehe. After we presented I wanted to cry because of Prof Phoon again, but this time it's because I'm very touched by his genuine care and concern for our group. He is really the bestest best mentor I've had here in NUS. Really.

Hmm. One funny thing about this design project is that the supervisors in charge actually thought we didn't have any other classes apart from this. The revelation came when one of them overheard my friend ask another classmate whether he has finished his assignment for another class, then the supervisor suddenly exclaimed "HUH? You have other classes apart from this???" Then we were also shocked and said "Of course!!!". Then he was like, "I thought they suspended the other classes until after your design project is over?"



WALAU. WHERE GOT SUCH THING MAN????

Anyway, now we know why they make our life so difficult like that. And now they know why we are so stressed.

Oh yeah, yesterday I felt bad for my groupmate too, because when she told her overprotective sister she will be coming home late because of the project, she was asked "IS THAT YOUR EXCUSE FOR STAYING AT *boyfriend's name* HOUSE TONIGHT???".

Hmm, so stressed already then got accused somemore. Then she began screaming her head off while arguing with her sister on the phone. Then her sister called my other group mate to confirm about the project thingy, and so my other groupmate had to convince the sister that yes, we are in fact really working hard on our project while she's having unclean thoughts about her younger sister who's already under so much pressure . Inevitably, my groupmate burst out crying because her family doesn't trust her, and probably because we still had a lot of things to do and it was already very late.

Anyway. Yeah, life is full of drama and tears nowadays because of this thing. Everyday when I wake up I'll ask God for strength to get through the day, else I might just snap haha.

And yeah. Good thing there's John. =)