Speaking at Singapore Polytechnic

Recently, my lecturer back when I was studying in Singapore Polytechnic said that he wanted to talk to me about a new module that he was teaching. Initially, we were thinking of meeting outside, but we decided that it was much more convenient to meet in Singapore Polytechnic. Then, my ex-lecturer suggested that I attend a class he was teaching, but asked me to join in towards the end of the last hour and of course, I was really glad to. The actual meeting took place yesterday.

When I entered the class, I was prepared to listen to an hour of lecture, because I thought that maybe my lecturer wanted comments on whether his teaching has improved over the years. However, little did I expect that he suddenly stopped the lecture and asked me to speak to his current students. To be honest, I was quite taken aback, since I was simply not prepared. At the same time, I am quite glad to be given a chance to speak to a class of students.

After getting through the initial surprise, I immediately began to think of a topic that I felt could relate to current students in Singapore Polytechnic. A few seconds later, I decided to talk about what Singapore Polytechnic students can do after they graduate and some of the paths that I know my friends have taken. I also dropped in a few lines of encouragement by saying that it is very possible to get higher starting salaries if they take their projects seriously and build up their expertise. Apart from that, I expose them to the concept of freelancing and submission of their business ideas to venture capitalists.

I tried to keep the speech as brief as possible, because I did not want to take up too much of their time, especially since they may still need to proceed with their lesson. At the end of the brief speech of around 30 minutes, I was thrown quite a lot of questions, spanning from my life in Singapore Polytechnic all the way to my life in University. I answered pretty much most of the questions, but kept responses as brief as possible. Of the questions I did not answer, I was just concerned that they will be out-of-point. At the end of everything, I left my email address behind so that they may be interested to forward me more questions.

I really enjoyed the experience of speaking yesterday. It felt really good that I may have helped to motivate some of them, even if it is just for a day. My lecturer was quite pleased with my speech and decided to talk to directors in the school and help to arrange for me to speak to a larger group next time. It sounds really interesting.

Apart from that, I spent the rest of my time in School talking to other ex-lecturers. It is really a fruitful experience.