Friday, April 21, 2006
Yesterday there's lots of work to do, we had a group meeting to discuss what are the next steps that we are going to do, such as further testing, and fabrication and lithography of more chips, so maybe it isn't so fast after all, but last week I thought things were going a little fast for my comprehension. I learnt the protocol once and I was almost expected to be able to carry out the tests myself. But hey, slow down! I love high expectations. What's life without a little challenge?
Then I retested the SAM (self-assembling monolayer) of in my experiment and the results were good. My supervisor is very optimistic, he said that after this part is done and when we go into the testing with intercalcators he can start writing another paper and I’ll have two papers under my belt. How nice!
I approached my supervisor for advice on my further education. My supervisor was talking about studying in the US. The education that the US provides is far better than any other institution and the whole world knows that.
In MIT, the professors there don't really bother about your GPA. They want to know whether you can do research. But the difference is not my grades, the difference is that they have the money to go there and study and I don't. So the bottom line that they're still offering is that take your undergraduate studies in NTU, then go overseas to the states for your masters or PhD.
Money shouldn't be the problem there, because you work as an assistant researcher doing actual research and getting paid for it at the same time, your employer pays for your tuition fees and pays you a salary for doing research as well. But I probably need to take a scholarship to get over to the US in the first place. They were really skeptical about Australia, a place where you just throw money and obviously the training over there can never be compared to the states. Moreover you won't be able to get a job there even after you graduate and you have to come back to Singapore.
UNSW seem lucrative to me because of the accelerated route. But will that leave my options open for my future development? US is out for undergraduate but it's the best for PhD. I think a US university won't accept a UNSW cert isn't it? All this thoughts has got me thinking about this guy in my course, he was saying that he wants to go to UNSW and really makes me wanna laugh, his GPA is probably in the low 2's. Now he's begging to get a place in NTU. I'd swear if he even gets in and laugh if he doesn't.
Anyway, I shouldn't be bothered by an insignificant... UNSW is fast, (graduating at 25). But I won't be able to continue after that and it's just plain working. NTU>US is slow, 3+5 = 8 years + 22yrs = 30 Years old for my PhD. Talk about having no life.
The best kind of CV in the US is several research papers (4-10), a decent GPA (3.5+), a good SAT and GRE* score. A masters is nothing over there, you immediately do your PhD after your Bachelors.
The best kind of CV in Singapore is a 3.9+ GPA, a strong CCA record with leadership positions.
It's really different in Asia and in the US.
Now my options have gone further in depth. Do I want to do a PhD? If I do do a PhD, it'll be nice, but I probably won't be paid much, working my butt out and will be away for 5 years. No girl will want to wait for 5 years for a guy isn't it? There are plenty of other guys out there. Sob. Either way it's still a sad and bleak future even if you are respected. If I do a PhD, then it's NS > NTU for me. If I don't then it's NS > UNSW for me.
Or maybe I am thinking too far. Do I really want to do a PhD?
There has been a name dubbed for PhD-candidates like us or Post-doc or even just undergrads. We are LOSERS - League of students with extraordinary research skills. Talk about being positive eh?
Then I went back to school to work on the magazine, sigh. Can't say much about that though, but here are some random photos.
*GRE - Graduate Record Examinations
7:29 PM
