Post camp

It has been a pretty emotional ride for me this week, so I shall sit down and slowly record my learning experience.

First of all, I went to camp on day 0 (Sunday) with an immensely heavy heart because I was convinced by Miss Toh that there is no other way other than to delay graduation by 2 full semesters. What would I do if I really had to? I don't know how to deal with it, the stigma and all. Plus the thought of not being able to graduate with all my peeps is depressing as well. On the bright side, I'd finally get time to do an internship. I'd also be able to take more modules to pull my CAP up. But when I graduate, how do I explain this to my employers?

Hi, I delayed graduation because I didn't bother to check requirements.

Who's going to employ such a careless worker? At least for now, I won't have to account for my slip-up because on the surface, I look like just any normal graduate. Right? :P

Anyway. Prof Leow was ten gazillion times nicer than Miss Toh. He listened to my problem and offered me solutions. Within half an hour and I am on my way to a four-year graduation. I even had time to ask him more questions about the modules. But, seriously I still think that the whole CM major is a major pile of bullshit. The syllabus is so messy and they keep making weird changes to it. Never mind. One more year :)

Okay, so, back to camp.

This is my first time attending a camp other than Ethelonter (NUS CSC camp). Things were... different. Everyone was a stranger to me. I had a hard time adapting. Camp comm people were really nice, and I'm grateful and appreciative of their efforts to make me feel like I belong. Thank you so much. Because of you guys, I don't regret joining this camp. But the OGLs are another matter altogether. Because I'm an unknown, they didn't bother to get to know me, and just kept sticking to the people that they already know. There was even an instance when I walked over wanting to say hi, and they just walked away. How traumatizing it was for me. This is a freaking camp. You guys are freaking OGLs. (Sigh) But of course, not all of them are like that. Exceptions always exist!

Apart from the people, the system that the camp runs on was an eye-opener to me. From it, I learnt one precious lesson: "Things don't just come into existence without effort." Honestly, a lot of things were so last-minute, and the camp was basically very unstructured and freestyle. It takes more than just capable people to put together and execute the whole camp smoothly and successfully, and I was kind of in awe of how the games cell managed to survive the camp. The director was... too lax. In my opinion, he was trying too hard to be a nice guy. And from my observation, he kind of has the mentality that things would fall into place with the snap of his fingers. Like, it was Saturday during pre-camp and he just suddenly told Marketing to "finalise all sponsors by Monday" when they only just started contacting sponsors like less than a week ago. Well, it is also weird why they didn't start contacting sponsors earlier, but anyway, what did he expect? Marketing to do magic? There were other instances but all suggest that he thinks things'll fall into place naturally. No, man, this isn't how things work! (sighs) And. The system was... also too lax. A lot of things were unconfirmed till the last minute, and also, many last minute changes were made on the spot. But of course, if compared to Ethelonter, it allows for way more room for creativity. Each to its own, I guess.

But anyway, now that camp is over, I just wanna say, "I hearts camp comm!" :D
When I joined, I had two objectives in mind that I wanted to achieve:

1. Beef up my portfolio - I designed 2 posters, 1 T-shirt, and helped a little with the website. Not a lot, but at least there's something. But I think I under-achieved on this one.
2. Integrate myself more into the SoC community - I hearts camp comm! Lol. But I am basically still quite unknown. Or rather, they know who I am but everyone shuns me. Never mind. I'm pretty much satisfied with what I have now.

Never quite expected myself to enjoy the camp despite falling sick during sentosa and developing an intense heat rash halfway through and being outcast by the GLs throughout the entire camp and being forced to play SP. Never expected to laugh like mad during the last night with the camp comm people. Never expected myself to develop post-camp syndrome as well.

ONWARDS TO THE NEXT CAMP!!! E8 is on the last week of June! Looking forward to it! :D

P.S. Got tired of all the spammers on my tagboard and decided to switch to comments. I'm using the new template now with all the "Gadgets" whatnot! I suddenly graduated from using blogskins.com ohmygosh. I hope I get used to this soon, or go learn CSS or something.