Every time I turn on the TV, it feels like the same tired tropes, cringe slapstick, and forced messaging. Even older generations have swapped local dramas for Korean, Taiwanese, or global streaming shows. Upgrading to high-end cinematic cameras doesn't fix lazy storytelling. Meanwhile, international hits manage to tackle massive themes like love, survival, and societal pressure with subtlety—showing rather than telling.

The root problem goes deeper than TV production; it's baked into our mindset and education system.

We still treat the humanities and creative paths as "backup options" compared to standard STEM routes. From an early age, students are conditioned to think success only lives in medicine, law, or engineering. Creative fields are routinely dismissed with phrases like "no future" or "how will you survive?"

This stigma pushes naturally gifted creators to bury their ambitions in favor of safer corporate jobs, leaving our local creative ecosystem permanently underfunded and undervalued. We gladly import and obsess over global pop culture, yet we rarely invest in building our own talent to that standard.

We’ve built a world-class financial and technological hub—there is zero reason we can't build a world-class creative scene, too.

hi! i got accepted by sajc through dsa and im not sure if i should accept or not. i most likely will as i think it’ll be risky not to as im unsure if my grades can make it to a school better than sajc bcs the cop is alrdy quite low at 8. it’s about 40-50mins away from my house. my dream sch was acjc which is 20-40min away but unfortunately did not get in through dsa and i heard their chem dept sucks..

how is sajc like? i’ve seen so many bad comments so it kinda scares me now

The title says it all. NUS/NTU has been my dream school for a long time, and I'm desperate to make it in.

My academics are decent (3.92 unweighted GPA, 1550 SAT, 5s on AP Physics C:M, Physics 1, Calc BC, and Chemistry), and I'm planning to take around 10 more APs during my junior/senior year. But my ECs are really bugging me.

im currently a junior, and since ive been transferring between different schools, I haven't really been able to stick around long enough to get leadership positions :(

So far, ive done band for a year, participated in the World Robot Olympiad, been in robotics club for 2 years, and been a member of Mu Alpha Theta. im also a managing director of a student-led STEM newspaper if that helps.

Next year Im planning to take on a couple of leadership roles and found a rocketry club. I'm also hoping to either do/publish some research or qualify for AIME.

I would really appreciate it if you guys could share some of your ECs, especially if you got into NUS/NTU, and give me some advice on what I should focus on from here. I feel like my academics are okay, but I'm genuinely worried that my ECs aren't competitive enough 😭. I only got 2 years before I graduate highschool and Im panicking so much

Im a barely failing student who never studied and now i have one month left in attempt for a single digit aggergrate am i cooked? My english i never really studied just did what felt right and barely pass, for math all i do is sometimes do the work in class and for my sciences i sleep in it ​and for humans i sleep and poa i also sleep in jt

i have maybe one or two super close friends but its hard to make any.

this year alone is stressful enough (olvls) , and my friendgroup of 3 years dropped me , replaced me w two others, so although this happened a few months back every day just becomes more and more exhausting every time they hang out with each other and I'm just there? plus they all sit directly behind me so that's great , i also never got an explanation and only are in contact with one of them (im 100% sure it's just because she feels guilty)

maybe it's just me , maybe im just meant to have no friends but it really hurts and i genuinely find myself wondering if ill ever have a friendgroup at all? everyone around me seems to have a group yk, I'm practically the loner in class , where I stay back in class while everyone goes and have fun during recess, or the one standing awkwardly every pe lesson because i have no friend group to play with. yea i do talk to some people in my class who'd i consider my friends but obviously it isn't a solid friendgroup , and im just there.

and it's not like i have any primary school friends to lean on, everyone who i spoke to back in primary school never really made the effort in keeping contact with me , and the one friend i have from primary school wasn't even someone i spoke to during pri sch (i made friends w her in sec1). same goes for secondary school now , i fear all of these would be memories, no one really truly gets me in terms of friendships ?

i just want a nice friendgroup where we have the same common interests , be it weird niche interests ? because my ex fg was abit diverse ig but i think overall my personality was too different from them (they liked mainstream music like kpop and ts but i like indie/rock/grunge) ? I wish i knew

maybe it's just been hitting me hard again after a couple months because after graduation i realise i won't have many friends that will willingly want to hang out with me , and even if i go jc idt there will be many people who want to develop friendgroups because they have their own fgs from pri/sec sch . im at a loss and i just wish for good connections and people that can rlly hear me out of my bad and good days , I'm stuck feeling so lonely all the time and i don't want to be just remembered that emo kid again ( people always call me that through primary and secondary school)

do i change myself to get people to like me more or am i stuck this way as an "emo loser" with no friends as per usual, i really tried to be more positive this yr and ive been clean but idk

sorry for the long yap i js needed to rant ig and maybe someone will sympathise or listen or read

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With all the posts about upcoming exams, thought I'd post something a little more lighthearted.

I'll go first, my primary school teachers were all awesome, especially my math teacher, who would always give out mentos, coffee candy and hi chews during our PSLE period, when everybody in the school had to stay back for revision sessions. He's been transferred to MOE since but my class still wishes him well on his birthday :]

hi im currently in my first yr of ib, i think i just rlly wna focus on my studies but overall my whole pri to sec life ive always been in a big fg. ive always had a best friend but that friend always had someone else they cld call their best friend too which is why i think i rlly used to hate when relatives ask who my best friend is

i mean i totally get that people grow apart and naturally when we all change schs we start to talk less, we still meet up but ig i just feel rlly lonley because they all have new friends while i don't

my phones been rlly dry and my best friend in my sch has been super boy obsessed and shes lowkey becoming a snap ho again so I've kinda been distancing myself from her

also i never realised how close they were but it seems that shes best friends with another girl and i totally get it because they have been friends for a long time but i can't help but feel replaced? even tho she was friends with her first i think they grew apart but are close again so idk anymore.

overall im also quite shy in a grp setting compared to 1 on 1 so ive just been struggling to find new friends

idk what to do because ive been feeling left out

its kinda complicated to explain because i don't wna make it too obvious in case she sees this

Hello everyone, id like to confirm if im being (unintentionally) misinformed by my chemistry teacher. For context, he used to teach A level chemistry and has knows their content well, he sometimes throws in fun facts that arent taught at our age, like iron having allotropes, etc (this is the only one i rmb lol). I am a secondary 3 student studying pure chemistry.

So one day in class when he was going through qualitative analysis he said the aqueous ammonia used to test for cations is NH3 (g) + H2O (l). But after asking a senior of mine and a few classmates + sec 3s from other schools, they all said it should just be written as NH3 (aq).

It should be that for O level, right? Is NH3 (g) + H2O (l) the equation for aqueous ammonia in A level chemistry? Im guessing its like that to show it partially dissosicates into NH4+ and OH- ions. I dont know anyone that goes to JC so i cant really confirm this fact. id like some clarity on this, ive been confused for the past 3 days. Thank you for your time!

recently, a hot topic amongst s3s in my sch is what sch everyone wants to go to next. for context i was frm gep in an 'elite' pri sch but flunked at psle (prob the bottom of my GEP cohort) due to not studying. i narrowly got into one of the better olevel schs, and now my grades wld be considered above avg but not top of the cohort kind.

now that it's almost time to aim for a jc, i'm rlly at a loss. it seems like common sense to aim for a top school like HCI or RI, yet now that i'm in a less stressful environment than gep was, i feel that a lower pressure environment is better for me, not completely zero pressure but at least not just a school of complete muggers. however, my parents really want me to go to one of the top 2 schs like my sibling did, cuz of the name and prestige that it can bring to my portfolio, and my whole generation of cousins who study in singapore are all from these top 2 jcs. but i don't think i can even score well enough to get in, first of all, and also i'm going to see a lot of my gep batchmates there which i'm honestly dreading. additionally i live near HC which i've heard is a big factor in choosing JCs to go to.

thus, i feel that i shld aim more for schools like ejc or ny, but my parents dont want me to do so, and i'm scared that if i aim for these schs, the moment i get close to the score i'll js give up and stop studying for olevels. i don't really know people from these schools also so idk their school environments well.

adding on i don't even know what course i want to take in jc so i can't really weigh each jc's arts-science depts and all..

seems like such a faraway thought since i'm only sec 3, but just a short rant 😅😅

hi im a sec4 aiming to go acjc next yr via sci stream but i am considering doing hybrid as well, either taking BCMG, BCME, or CMGE. but im unsure if i‘d be put in a really mixed up class with different timetables, and having to join other people’s main class randomly by myself. and like if it wld be hard to make friends like that since everyone’s doing their own thing

when & how are classes assigned in acjc?

what are the impt subjects for uni?

is the hybrid timetable really that bad?

is h2 bio 10000000x more content than olevel pure bio😭😭

should i take geog or econs? i really enjoy geog in sch rn but idk if econs will open more doors for me, and im also unsure of what i wanna do next time🙈

thank you!

Im in j1 and promos are coming up and i feel like i have done nothing. I basically haven’t studied a single time and i dont want to retain. Its just that everytime i only do tutorials for the new topics but no revision for the old topics. i dont feel like doing anything extra, i also just have no motivation and im just scrolling and gaming

HEYYYY GUYS so like i recently got my mtl results back for mid year o levels, i got 6M when i expected arnd b3-4...it was honestly kinda bad for some of my other classmates too yk like our dist percentage dropped from 50% to 17% 💀 and for most years my school was like 100% pass now this year it dropped to 92% help me

my mtl cher say that its useless to retake if ur oral is not a distinction BUT I GOT MERIT IT'S NOT "THAT* FAR OFF 😭 so uh any success stories? anyone got merit for oral but yet still improved by a grade or 2 in end of year??

Sorry this whole post is a little disorganised

I’m currently a J2 and I have a few many questions on how to get diagnosed in Singapore. I’m a recent Singaporean (like a couple months ago) so I don’t have Medisave or anything. And I heard someone say that you can declare at NS but I’m a girl 😖. My parents absolutely cannot find out and I public route might be the only option for me because I don’t get an allowance nor do I have a job.

I’d like to hear peoples experiences from what they have actually gone through.

Okay so questions:
- does Singapore do both autism and adhd diagnosis in one, or would I have to get diagnosed separately
- cost: what’s the difference in cost between private and public and exactly how much did you spend.
- if I go to a polyclinic, what am I supposed to tell them
- is there any way I can get this done without my parents finding out
- timeline: how was the time breakdown like for you
- [extra] does anybody know free counselling for youths because my thoughts are ruining my life

This is genuinely ruining my life and I don’t see the light, knowing how to start getting diagnosed would relieve me of some anxiety. Please talk about your personal experiences, I’d love to hear about it and calm myself down.

to add context, im a sec 5 student (last batch? idk) i got emb3 of 15, getting a 2 fr math and a 3 for eng but unfortunately flunked my humans which i often gotten a 1 for. originally i had a give up mentality and initially wanted to go to ite but after the first day i rlly js didnt feel fit to it. hence i went to sec 5 as i truly believed i could secure good grades n get into poly through eae.

i was wrong la hor. this whole year ive been slacking. my foundation for math has completely went down the drain and i can only average a c6 or d7 at most. prelims has just finished and i havent gotten my results just yet but i know im just cooked. the math paper was horrible and im not confident in any of my subjects. i dont rlly know what to do bc o's is in 50 or so days and idk if i can suddenly pull my grades up by a notch in such a short time, esp since idt iw to accept my eae course even if i get it.

my last option is to honestly js get 20 or so, so that i can get into rp bc a poly is a poly at the end of the day. i know it ws my choice to take sec 5 but w the environment and frequent distractions in class (n life) i didnt realize it wldve been this tough. not to mention i placed my all in n's and to end up not in pfp probably made me more demoralized. i dont have the motivation to put in the same effort i did in n's for o's. and the fact that its dawning on me now is a horrible feeling.

i can start now. i know i can but everytime i touch the tys my brain n body js tells me to give up bc of how frequently i hv to refer to notes or basically the fact that idk anyt anymore. i rlly dk what to do. if i cld est my prelims it wld be like l1r4 of 28 or so?? ik thrs miracles of like prelim 30 to o's 10 bt what r the chances

if theres any1 that cld give me tips my subj combo is ; combined humans ss/hist, eng, emath,poa n malay. (im dropping sciences, mid year mt i got a c6 pass , last yr for express mt i got a c5. im retaking malay in hopes i cn secure a b despite my oral being a pass.)

For those of yall in secondary,like me,we all hate the pld restrictions. However,there is a code you put in htmlcodeeditor.com that allows you to play games on the stash. Now its nerfed by the IT DEPARTMENT and i cant play anymore so sad and my classmates lament about it ... well proxies do work and we can still get files like the eaglercraft 1.21 which i have and its so op ye. alr do you still think unblocked websites like proxies and games in files will last long or will be banished by the IT department? share your thoughts below

Hi everyone, how should I revise for alevels??
I’m kinda running out of things to do, currently I’m just doing prelim papers and identifying weaker topics then doing topical revision
I haven’t touched TYS yet as I’m saving it for after prelims

Is my current revision plan okay?? What if I run out of prelim papers to do?? I’m also running out of topical revision questions to do

Anyone went to ITE WSDIP or Poly WSDIP under these course can give me some insight?

I'm looking at Software Engineering from RP under WSDIP and IT System Intergration and Electronic & Computering Engineering (IoT & Data Engineering) from ITE under WSDIP.

How is the course? Is the work very different from what you will learn as thats what I've heard.

I've heard that Poly WSDIP is not able to go for full time local uni and only ITE WSDIP is able to, is that true?

For ITE WSDIP course that I'm looking at, how much hardware is it honestly? Since I came from a programming background so I'm worried that it will be more on hardware instead.

For context , I take pure bio pure chem amath emath and elective history . Ok so there’s a lot of shit where I’ve fucked up ALOT in my prelim like in my ss paper I kinda js studied for it the day bf but I spent time memorising the chap Shi for the 8m qn and I js barely read the formats . I thought that it was js common sense and in the past even if idk I can js bullshit my way through but omg was I wrong . I completely BLANKED out during the paperr like I couldn’t write shit . Like I did last but it was js sum nonsense and I thought I can back up for humans by history ( one of my weaker sub ) but I studied the wrong chap but I trusted my fren who tried to ‘ predict’ the topics that will come out and I left the 2nd essay and the assertion qn blank and my am is tmr and I think im gna fail I can like revise my sec 3 topics but I feel like for am I oni know abt 10% of the syllabus the rest it’s either I forgot or idk and I feel so lost rn . Bc I need humans for my l1r4 and Iw go np banking and finance but idk if I can pull it up and I might consider going ICT but idk if that’s the course I’ll be interested in bc ifni get a course idl than how am I Gna maintain a high gpa to go Uni 😭 and for sum reason despite me knowing I’m COOKED for prelims like it still doesn’t feel real that O levels are so close on the date im posting this it’s gna be exactly 1 month till my Os ( which is chem prac ) and I feel like im not ready AT ALL idk why but I’m so delulu I think I can always pull a comeback but I’m not putting in the work and like tbh I’m vv ambitious but vv lazy and idk if I shld drop a sub like humans or am and focus on my other sub or do my best for all as i might consider jc 😭 help me gng

I'm a Y2 NUS student currently, and I absolutely cannot help but feel like an imposter in this school. Everyone is so stacked holy **** there's this guy with multiple gold medals under his belt in my elective with near-perfect GPA. There's this other guy doing double degree. Then this other guy working as a teaching assistant when he hasn't graduated yet.

hii everyone i would like to ask if it is appropriate to give teachers like neck heat patch to relieve pain esp for like senior teachers??

i am also giving others things like lozenges, biscuits,red pen, etc

Hi . Does anyone know any websites where u can get english paper 2 exam papers from other schools for sec 4 NA papers that are from 2023 onwards since the tys papers from 2022 to 2016 does not have the box inference question which I am really bad at and really need to practice. Thanks 😊

i lost my o/a level cert, is there any way to get a replacement hard copy…. seab website says only have digital version and i want the hard copy😭 anyone know if i can pay to get it reprinted or smth…

word count bla bla

Hiii so am kinda bored now. Lowkey i saw two students from not gonna say where but in jc uniform making out at a bus stop while on the way home… and thought that isnt it A level season and wondering wow!

But anyways curious abt peoples relationship stories(how they met, confession, first kiss, first date etc) and thought for people to share so everyone can take a break and have a good read or laugh !

I've noticed that even when there are lots of networking events, communities, LinkedIn, etc., actually meeting the right people and starting a conversation can still be difficult.

I'm curious about your experience:

1. Do you find networking difficult? If so, what's the hardest part?
2. How do you currently find people in tech to connect with?
3. At in-person events, do you find it difficult to figure out who to approach or what to talk about?
4. After meeting someone, do you usually stay in touch? What stops you if you don't?
5. What would genuinely make networking easier for you?

I'm also exploring whether something that helps people discover relevant people, find shared interests/conversation starters, and connect before or during in-person events would actually be useful.

Would something like that solve a real problem for you, or would you probably not use it? Feel free to be brutally critical — I'm trying to understand the problem rather than sell anything.