Thursday, March 12, 2009
Thinking like LKY
Young people seldom associate with Mr LKY fondly, but slowly, I think my mindset is scarily gearing towards his.
I always believe that people who don't work hard (enough) have no right to complain about their current mediocrity. Because you have enjoyed the slack of, well, being slack, then don't complain about your lack of results (not just academically).
It's not that I never failed before. I have failed plenty of times, the deepest one hitting me was of course being forced by the school to drop to combined science during sec 4. I could have blamed the school, blamed my family etc, but I didn't. I just knew that I was lazy from sec 1 to 3, and I definitely deserved that kind of treatment. What did I do? Study in one year what other people studied in 4 years - in my sec 4 year. Think it was easy? L1R5 32 to L1R5 8. Go figure.
I still have yet to get an internship, up to now. Despite the many cover letters + resume I sent, I still have not gotten any reply from them. Judging by my major, my CAP, perhaps my CCA record, I should have a high chance of beating others, no? I can blame luck, I can blame the society. Yes, I did when it first happened to me. But so what? I still have to bite the bullet, waste more time, and email more agencies.
Mr LKY also once said, roughly, that if you have good people under you, your job as a leader is really simple, you do half the work. If you find bad people under you, you have to work doubly hard to cover for him/her. How true, how true.
Sometimes people think I'm being proud, or I'm being boastful. But come on, do people see the hard work behind? You think Oweek just happened like that? What about the arts camp + 1000 x proposal vetting + video planning + video filming + house ic por-ing + log buying + everything and everything (with work somemore)? We did the hard work, we deserve the credit. Instead of trying to be hypocrite and pretend to be humble, why not accept what you deserve confidently?
Logic test: I practised Natural Deduction for 3 days, pracitised and practised, copied those unreadable answers from the textbook website to a clear form, understood then memorised them. Don't I deserve the full marks and the credit I get as a result? I'm confident to claim the credit, because, deep down I know, for my assignments, I never asked friends to tell me what to do, the most I asked for is some mathematical checks or grammar checks. When people ask me what I get and I answer with a straight face: "Full marks." Is that boasting? If you can't take it, don't ask me. And, to repeat, I totally deserve it cause I worked for it.
I'm not sure why I'm typing this, but many a time, I do have a siege mentality. As I grow older, the less I can accept people's complaints, when in the first place, they didn't work hard for it, or work hard physically in terms of time, but not in terms of brain effort.
Not everyone has the same aims in life, I accept that. Just that to me, wanting high = working hard, wanting to slack = aiming low. People who work low, but aim high, are really mindsets I just can't seem to accept.
Different people perhaps have different innate ability, I accept that. But given that your ability is like that, shouldn't you work even harder, or learn even more ways to work smarter? I always think of the example of let's say Singapore. Constraints are aplenty, but we did find ways to work AROUND the constraints and build our country, didn't we? Through sheer hard work of our older generations, seriously. Plus of course, smart ways to work around the constraints.
(And history people please don't give me the shit about Singapore being already a nice trading place etc - it ain't enough without smart planning and hardwork)
And again, another blog post so serious and angsty. Haha, I'm getting old.
p.s. A happy note! Thinking back, what a great day it was for me. Blackburn Rovers rose to 15th (a position not heard of since Paul Ince was boss), got full marks for 2 tests. =) Still nervous about Rovers' relegation battle though. Good win! =D
lowtide blogged @
2:11 am
