Q&A: A chemistry degree @ NUS

Hello everyone. I am back from Sweden to a cold and rainy London - yeah who would have thought that Sweden was going to be +24 and sunny whilst London was going to be +12 and rainy, but there you go. I am currently working on a much longer piece about the CPF issue but in the meantime, I felt I couldn't do this comment justice by simply replying to it in a rather old piece I had written a while ago, so here is a longer reply and I invite my readers to offer this student your opinions as well. Let's begin by looking at the comment that s/he has left me.

mmwyz193 June 2014 03:29

Hi limpeh,

I have recently finished my first year in NUS as a chemistry student and also chanced upon your posts on degrees and university courses. I feel that the emphasis on grades here are really heavy and the expectations are quite ridiculous. I've gotten straight B for my modules and my GPA is a 3.4/5. However people say that it's a poor score and adults and other students have said my chances of landing a good job is very low due to my poor gpa and useless course (chemistry). However I feel that that's not the case as I have performed well when working as a temp staff during my vacations. What are you views on this?

Well mmwyz19, thanks for your comment and I welcome questions like that. Now to begin with, I am going to offer a disclaimer: I have never worked in Singapore for a Singaporean employer, so my point of view may be somewhat British/European since I have only ever worked for European employers since my graduation okay? I accept that a Singaporean employer may behave quite differently from me, but given how international Singapore is becoming, I think it is probably worth my while offering a more 'international' perspective to this issue.

You strike me as a very Singaporean student who is totally obsessed with your grades - just chill for a second. Most employers would not go through your grades with a fine comb to look for B grades just to prove, "aha! You got a B for this module, that means you are lazy and stupid, fuck you!" Nah, that never happens and even if it does, would you want to work for someone like that? Hell no. What most employers would do is look at the overall grade you receive at the end of your course (I am going to use the British classification system here which I believe is still used in Singapore) and if you have a first class or second upper (2:1) grade, then employers are not going to split hairs about what you got for this module or that module in your first year etc. It is only if you end up with a second lower (2:2) or third class degree then questions may be asked about why you did so badly. (Like, were you sick during the exam period?)

What does getting an A in an exam prove to a potential employer?

I ended up with a second upper 2:1 from my degree and that was a mix of grades spanning the full range from A to C but yes, I had a couple of Cs in there which were averaged out with the As but guess what? Not a single employer has ever gone through my grades and asked me about the grades in detail - they just needed to see that I went to a good university and I studied hard enough to get a 2:1 there, that was enough for me. Only competitive Asian students will be interested in what you got for this module or that module because they are comparing themselves with you - ignore them, or tell them to fuck off: they're just being mean. Don't pay any attention to assholes like that, most employers are probably disinterested in the finer details of your grades. Why?

Because a company would be hiring you to do a job, not study for exams. What an employer needs to see if your ability to learn new things quickly, grasp new concepts and cope with new challenges. Even if you are going into a job which is chemistry-related, then no employer is going to expect you to hit the ground running and give you virtually no training. Hell no. That does not happen in the real world. Your future employer would teach you everything you need to know that is related to your job and whilst your chemistry degree will give you some understanding of how the basic processes work, most of what you will learn will be very specific to the role you are performing, the product the company is making, the kind of clients you're handling, what the manufacturing process you're involved in requires.

What you do as a working adult will be nothing like your student life.

Besides, there will be no shortage of straight-A students who have excellent academic results - jobs are not given out purely on the basis of academic merit. Heck, the recruitment process is so complex: we have psychometric tests, role plays, lengthy interviews, group work exercises and other tests just to access the candidates in detail. If jobs were purely given out on the basis of academic merit, then all we would do is invite candidates to send in their exam results and we would give out the jobs to those with the best grades - clearly, it does not work like that in the real world simply because your straight-A geek who is great at mugging for exams may be totally useless in a corporate environment or struggle to fit in creative environment.

Such is the problem with Singaporean culture - you guys place way too much emphasis on academic achievement and you guys totally neglect other aspects of a young person's development. I generally refer to this whole area as 'soft skills' and this problem does present a great opportunity for you in today's job market! Think about it: if all these other Asian geeks think that only grades matter and they neglect to develop any kind of soft skills to help them in the work place, think how much of an advantage you would have over them. Some people may view the situation as a problem when you have a society full of geeks with little or no soft skills to speak of, but I see this as an opportunity for you if they are all making the same mistake - by avoiding their mistakes, you get to stand out from the crowd.

Can you avoid the mistakes of others and rise above the competition?

Of course, let me be clear: there will be some Singaporeans employers who may go through your academic records with a fine comb and only hire those with straight As - you will never be able to work for someone like that unless you are a straight A student yourself but then again, do you want to? I would not want to because I would be surrounded by academically brilliant geeks who may be great at scoring As at exams but may be a real pain in the ass to work with. When you are job hunting, you need to be careful about what kind of company you want to work for, what kind of work environment you will enjoy working in because let's face it - once you start working, you'll be spending most of your waking hours at work, so it is vital that you choose a job that you will enjoy rather than just take the first thing that comes along. Do you even know what kind of job you would like to apply for when you graduate?

Now from what you've told me in your comment, I don't know if you have any soft skills but you did tell me that you have worked part time as a temp. Now that's a very good start indeed! And here's more good news: you're studying at NUS - that is a very good university, the fact that you have earned yourself a place there already tells employers that you're more than capable of studying hard and learning new concepts. The fact that you've already had some work experience will teach you something very important: there is a huge gulf between being a student and being a working adult - the more you can do to bridge that gulf, the easier the transition will be for you when you do graduate.

Are you doing more than just studying as a student?

As for chemistry - is it a good degree to have? I think it is and I'm not even going to make any Breaking Bad references here. Here's the thing - we don't know what kind of job you will do in the future. You may do something that is directly related to chemistry or you may do something that is completely unrelated to chemistry: so much of that depends on what kind of direction you want to take career into in the future. The choice is yours, you need to decide what you want to do with your life - so stop talking as if your future is so very bleak that you have to struggle to find a good job in the future. Ignore the idiots who are bitching about your grades - they're just being stupid assholes.

At the end of the day, you need to think much further ahead in terms of your career - what do you want to do with your life? What would a good job mean to you? Money? Freedom to innovate? Freedom to be creative? Maybe you'll prefer to be your own boss or be self-employed? Or do you prefer to work in a team? What kind of role do you want to play? Do you want to work in Singapore? Would you be good at managing people or are you the kind of specialist who just wants to be left on your own with your ideas? What kind of work life balance do you want? You see, I have hundreds of questions like that for you and you need to be able to answer them if you even want to begin to find a 'good job'.

Do you know what you want out of a job?

Right now, I suspect you don't even know what you would define clearly as a good job or your ideal job, let alone know how to get what you want. That may sound harsh and correct me if I am wrong, but I am guessing that you're making the same stupid mistake that so many seemingly intelligent Singaporean students make. They focus on the journey rather than the destination. Your education is the journey, your future job is the destination - you need to think about where you want to go and how to get there, rather than fuss over the details of what is actually going on during the journey. You need to take control of your destiny and think about your future rather than fuss about the present. What will make you happy ten years down the road? What does success mean to you? What do you need to do next?

I look back at the classmates from VJC - some of them are extremely successful whilst others are not. I can tell you that my former classmates include on one extreme the head of an huge investment bank, a woman who runs her own (very successful) PR consultancy, a couple of highly successful lawyers and on the other end of the scale, there are at least two working in dead end jobs barely able to make ends meet and two housewives who don't even have a career. Look, VJC is a very good school, you don't get students who are bad at exams. We were all very good at scoring straight-As in our exams, but what made the difference in our working lives? Why are some of us so successful whilst others are struggling to make ends meet? The answer is very obvious: one's academic grades can only tell you so much about the person - we are so much more than our report card, our results slip at the end of an exam.

You are so much more than just your academic results. 

I shall leave it at that - please be assured that you are in a good university, you are getting a respectable degree and I wouldn't lose any sleep over your grades at this stage. Work hard, you'll be fine.  I have given you plenty of food for thought and if you have any further questions, please feel free to give me a shout. I also invite my other readers to offer this reader their thoughts and suggestions as well. Thanks for reading, let's have a healthy debate about this.