Job.

I’ve been in this job since 3 September 2007, which means I’ve been here for slightly under one and a half years. Can’t say it’s a long time, but certainly 18 months aren’t that short either.

My job involves quite a bit of communication. I talk to students, giving advice to them for their activities. Of course there are always different types of students, some who are well-behaved and give me the proper respect when they talk to me, while there will always be some who I would say to have a bit more character than others who might get me on my nerves. I think I’m fine with all of them, considering that I was a student with "a bit more character" when I was in NUS anyway. I think talking to students sometimes is the most enjoyable part of my job. Yes, none of them is perfect and they always contrive to "make my day" with their late and incomplete requests, or testing our limits with silly things they do. Sometimes it does get me a bit irritated, but then again, this could well be the last chance they get to do something so haphazard and get away with it! Not that I’m an advocate for haphazard work, but I always believe university is a place where you can still afford to make mistakes and most importantly, learn from them. Of course I’m not too sure whether they get the learning part right, but then again, sometimes you can never be too particular. Nowadays I tend to allow the students to do what they want to do as long as they stay inside the boundaries – and I think while students nowadays have definitely become more individualistic than those in the past, they appreciate the little allowances here and there we give them. I don’t think I’ve seen any posts on the free speech wall demanding my resignation (or sacking), so I guess I’m doing fine as far as the students are concerned!

Besides communication with students, I do quite a bit of project work as well. For example, I’m helping to organize the Intervarsity Speech Contest for these 2 years, and also helping out with other ad-hoc projects here and there. Of course being in an administration role things can get a bit routined and repetitive, but I guess every time there will be new challenges to be encountered, even if the projects are essentially the same. And the best thing about these projects is that my colleagues are all nice people who always help one another. And I believe these colleagues are some of the best ever that I’ve met – not that I’ve been working with a lot of people before, but the people in my office definitely rank high up there when I eventually retire and look back on the years of work that I’ve done.

Of course, there are always going to be frustrations here and there as far as the job is concerned, but I’m sure every job has its own fair share of problems. I guess the challenge is to really find something to feel enjoyable about, and that should be good enough.