Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Insane fear



Contemplate that your a university student, what do you really want to achieve in 'U' education? Yup, to most people, it is about gaining very good score, landing a good job and other ECAs if your really interested to pursue. But what happens in a university where peer pressure is extremely high for scoring a decent grade is it pushes the students to paranoid mood. So only one thing comes to those students is obviously studies, studies and studies.

They basically tend to forgot all the things they have to learn in university and just focus on cramping the lecture notes to score high grades. This is what happening in my university too (NTU). If you have a good look at the video, you see hordes of students waiting outside main library building well before 8.30 am because the library opens at 8.30am. It is extremely hard to find a place to sit in library before one month of exams.

NTU students are undoubtedly one of the best students in cramming for the examination in Asia - pacific. We have so many brilliant students so most all the students believe in hard work and it has literally increased boundary high for the good score. Relative grading is another phenomenon why we have stiff competition in the exam grades. I think there is gradual tweaking happening in NTU curriculum and grading so this may reduce the pressure on students. I hope this kind of insane fear of exams will gradually reduce.

4 comments:

  1. hahah, good post Mr. Velan. By doing hard work most of the students forgot to see "Beautiful mind "? Here you go:
    Recall the lessons of Adam Smith, the father of economics.In competition.... individual ambition serves the common good. That was a main dogma in Europe about two centuries ago.Most of European values were developed within this rule. That's how many good things like industrial revolution , and bad things like colonialism and imperialism were created. But you know, I won't blame this theory , at least it gave a great intensive for a finest life to most of us. Yet, it still one of three major characteristics of capitalism.Competition , Freedom of contract, right to own property. But concept of free competition was revised after one of the greatest mathematicians in US proved otherwise. Let's take a look at one of the quotas from beautiful mind, where John Nash , main character explains that concept of free competition is wrong. In a scene he discuss how PhD students from Princeton should approach lady which is in hot demand.
    Nash: If we all go for the blonde, we block each other, and not a single one of us is goin’ to get her. So then we go for her friends, but they will all give us the cold shoulder because nobody likes to be second choice. But what if no one goes for the blonde? We don’t get in each other’s way, and we don’t insult the other girls. That’s the only way we win. That’s the only way we all get laid.
    As a conclusion I must say that the best result comes, when everyone do the best for himself ,and it's own group.
    So it seems to be that NTUinas don't know basis of economy well :)

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  2. @Oleg dude you actually got hooked to beautiful mind movie man. When it comes to getting laid part, I totally in agreement with u.Btw, most of the NTUians don't perfom well on economics elective do u knew that? That might be the reason why we didn't understand the principles of the economics and everyone is working hard to get the blonde instead everyone choose their field of interest like settling for other brunettes.

    Dude free market is unfair according to lot of experts, it is not a fair market actually. Everything is propped up artifically for what.

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  3. Hey guys!

    Oleg you are actually talking about game theory.

    Everybody is trying to get the best for themselves. Just like Goldman Sachs trying to use super computers to be able to trade in 1/50 of a second!

    Imagine if "everyone do the best for himself,and it's own group", finance sector will never earn those obscene bonuses!

    Engineering would be the best job cos the finance ppl they basically do nothing constructive anyway... =D =D

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  4. @oleg- nice to bring the nash equilibriul up- fine thinking really- Thinking out the box and also for the common good, I see! I, unfortunately can see only one way everyone can attain a common cumulative mark. Score well in some courses and not so well in the others- the others do the exact opposite for the respective courses. The statistical things involving skewed distributions and the number of standard deviations of each particular set of persons in the distribution, when it comes to doing the final grade, may upset that apple cart too! But one can't actually do that can they, considering that applying the Nash Equilibrium is a bit altruisitc :)

    @sat- Nice post vel's man! Never knew that people can get so worked up about exams here! :D Good video too! And yes, people can take a chill pill! This seems a bit obscene X(
    Cramming- in the hallways and for the exams! :D

    @wiki- Ultimately, many engineers try to end up as financial managers! :P I wouldn't mind if a bit more dough ends on my lap!!

    But many people/firms use the Nash Equilibrium in regard to negotiations and all that jazz. That's why he won the Nobel Prize in Economics!

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