refine question

previously interviewed Questions

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- What is your hobby?

- What do you do everyday?

- Are you happy with what you do everyday?

- Are you happy if you are alone or with friends?

 

Refined interview questions

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- What course are you from?

 

- Are you facing any stress in your studies/school work?

- rate your stress

 

- How do you handle your stress?

 

- How long do you spend on your studies/school work everyday?

 

- How long do you spend on your hobby?

 

- Would you do your assignments ahead of time or will you do it last minute?

- if last minute, why? Are you able to finish your work on time?

- if ahead of time, why? Are you able to finish your work on time?

 

- Do you think having stress on studies is a good thing or a bad thing?

-why?

 

stress lvl

1. This boy who was taking his “O” Level exams was so stressed up during the exam that he totally blanked out on the very first thing he needed to shade on the answer sheet. No, I was not referring to any questions on the exam paper. I was referring to his name. He was shocked by himself that he could not even remember his own name. Of course, he broke down and left the exam hall.

2. There was another girl from one of the SAP schools. She has always been top in class and scored more than 95% in all her subjects. And one day, she scored only 87 in her Maths paper and received so much pressure from her parents that she literally lost it. What was it? She lost her mind. Totally. She went crazy. And no matter how much counciling was done, nothing could bring her normal self back. The string was so taut that it broke. Her parents regretted giving her so much pressure, but it was too late. Nothing could bring their daughter back.

***

Suddenly, some forcefully forgotten memories unlocked themselves from some part of my membranes and started to flash across my mind.. One… by one… I remembered…

My late cousin who jumped off from a building… Nobody knew what was the reason… We only knew that it was a tragedy for such a pretty girl to die in such a horrible manner… Perhaps her late mother who jumped into the sea had such a great impact on her… That she had to follow her mother’s footsteps…

An aquaintance who took his own life… He was the top student of the Arts faculty. He was the top student in his previous school. He only left a letter to ask his sister to take good care of their parents. A couple of days before he was gone, I remember seeing him at the bus stop outside school and everything seemed alright.

A classmate Audrey who suffered from depression and dropped out of school… She was one of the prefects in school with excellent results.. But one day, she just didn’t come to school anymore.

A teacher from NJC who lost her mind one day and forgot to come for class… Our monitress went and found her blabbering to herself in the office. It was supposed to be our GP test. And she just gave the stack of test papers to the monitress and stared blankly into space. We only know that an ambulance was called and took her away. We never saw her since then and we had no idea what happened to her…

Some of the stress teenagers in Singapore face

Singapore is a pleasant city to live in, clean to the point of obsessive, full of greenery and generally safe. Yet at the same time, it is also one of the most competitive and driven places in the world. There exist a perpetual rush, from the home to the workplace, to achieve the highly desired “5 Cs: Car, Condominium, Credit card, Club and Career”, to reach the top of the corporate ladder, or simply to be the very best. The chronic problem with Singapore is that its always rushing to get somewhere, time that is wasted is time that you’ll be regretting later. You should always go the extra mile or twenty because if you don’t, you would lose out to your neighbors. This “Kiasu” mentality, or loosely translated, the fear of losing, has permeated every level of Singaporean life, including the lives of teenagers.

Sure enough, most teenagers in Singapore face the generic teenager stresses, such as relationship stresses, the pressure imposed by the change of expectations due to the transition towards adulthood, but for the majority of the population, the predominant stress is the fear of becoming a social failure, of not achieving enough As to get into the school of their choice, of being looked down by their peers in the future because of mistakes they make now. It is scary to contemplate, but many youths have an unhealthy fear of failure.

While I applaud the ministry of education’s attempt at providing appropriate education for different academic capabilities of students, its sad to note that its laudable efforts has seemed to backfire in the face of Singaporean Kiasuism. As quipped in the popular social commentary “I Not Stupid”, people are obsessed with academic grading and getting into “Institutes of Technical Education” or ITEs for short has been seen as social suicide, or “It’s the End” for teenagers.

In a society that is often quick to judge, and not particularly discerning about their judgments, teenagers in Singapore are driven to be stressed about every grade that they get, every single point that they receive and every tick or cross that flashes across their often myopic eyes. Young students that are getting exceptional grades in school, often see themselves as lacking, leading to several of them as young as 10-11 years old choosing to end their own lives, than to face what they perceive as a dead-end future. It is a distressing phenomenon and one that has to be stopped.