2022, Wrapped
Getting through As: Experiences Gained, Lessons Learnt
It’s been a long time (270 days, to be exact) since I’ve last written a newsletter.
Since then, I’ve finished Singapore’s pre-college national examinations (A-Levels, or ‘As’ as most Singaporean students would call it) and spent about two months travelling around the world (Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, New York, Philadephia).
Here’s a piece (Part 1!) summarising my key takeaways and experiences through the A-Levels, written in a cramped ✈️ cabin.
Part 2, detailing my experiences in New York 🗽, would be dropping soon.
Getting through As: Metahabits Learnt
While I questioned the purpose of regurgitating the 70-odd organic chemistry reagents, reactions and conditions leading up to the A-Levels, my brother provided a different perspective. He urged me to see every test, exam and study session as an opportunity to train my mental muscle, to put into practice different metahabits that are applicable to different stages of life, not just merely applying them in the context of a student preparing for a one-off examination.
There are two highly applicable lessons that I’ve taken away from my time preparing for the As:
Grit, tenacity and discipline
Having gone through a whole year of mugging, the skill of locking into a mode of deep focus within a short time period was something that I was getting better at. Despite writing about the concept of deep work in one of my earlier newsletters, I realised it was more challenging than I had made it look.
Beyond getting in the zone quickly, what was more important to me was the ability to sustain that focus until I had hit my goals for that study session. From a broader perspective, making sure that I could sustain the same pace of doing practices for several months was important too.
This was the case in June: days started early in the library with a buddy doing mock exam papers together, followed by a lunch break, targeted topical practices after, ending with a run in the late afternoon. While this entire month wasn’t rosy, I’m glad that I was able to grind it out and see some improvements (however minute) in my grades in the months leading up to the actual A-Level Examinations.
Caveat: achieving full focus was hard nonetheless
One downside of being exposed to an awesome global youth community was knowing how high the opportunity cost was of spending practically the entire year (8-9 months) studying for one major examination. Yet the As were so crucial: it single-handedly dictates the education pathways that are open to a student who wants to pursue his/ her college studies in Singapore. And as thousands of Singaporean students have gone before me, I had to complete this rite of passage by taking the As.
There were times I felt absolutely discouraged when I saw that the work that I was putting in wasn’t paying off in better grades. It was during such times that my mind began to wonder elsewhere: the developments of GPT-3, how I could be spending my time building things I was genuinely interested about, rather than iterating through different variations of the application of the same formula.
But it had to be done. I’m glad to have finished it, knowing that I tried my best.
Being grounded despite uncertainty
I’ve always been a nervous freak leading up to big events - be it before races when I was still in my high school cross country team, or before major examinations like the A Levels. Having the knowledge that something was of high stakes didn’t help. More often than not, it would hamper my performance.
As I racked my brain for a solution, I thought back to the time in which I ran my fastest 5k ever, in spite of the horrible external conditions that I couldn’t control. The night before the race, as I went through Ryan Hall’s buildup to his 2010 Boston Marathon, I told myself that my worth wasn’t defined by the times that I ran. It was just going to be a competition with myself, not against anyone else.
Applying the same principles to the national exams, I was determined to be grounded in the fact that I was more than just my grades (although I didn’t always feel that way). Meditating on this newfound freedom released the tension before every paper. (Do reach out to me if you want further elaboration!)
This concept was explored in another article that I wrote recently. Looking back (two weeks after having written that article), the last section on groundedness couldn’t have been more essential given the context of how the A-Levels were graded: being percentile-based in nature, there was no way to gauge which end of the spectrum I would land on a national level.
Knowing how to discard any external expectations that I had placed on myself, learning the skill of moving on to the next paper despite screwing up, and tuning out the opinions of others were just some of the most valuable lessons that I picked up.
There’s one scene in the movie Hustle that stood out to me (it’s also my favourite movie of 2022):
Against the backdrop of Runnin’ by David Dallas, in the middle of the famed training montage, Bo Cruz (Juancho Hernangomez) missed a shot. Stanley Sugerman (Adam Sandler) immediately ranted - “I don’t care about that [missed] shot! It’s about the next shot. And the next shot. And the next shot.”
That was exactly how I wanted to approach my papers, after I had done them.
Looking back, I took comfort in the fact that I tried my best, and most crucially, knowing that my worth was not predicated on the final outcome. Moving forward, this was a lesson that I wanted to take away: making peace with my past performance, learning how to put my best foot forward without focussing too much on the past (especially if nothing can be done about it).
Things I did leading up to, and during, As:
Spent 714 hours studying from the start of 2022 (1.1.22) to the end of As (26.11.22)
Listened to this playlist, on repeat. Prior to this, I had never found music that could be used for both studying and working out.
Spent way too much time on YouTube, accumulating more than 10 hours of entertainment time on my first week of examinations 💀
Realised the importance of daily trackers to hold myself accountable to the work that I did
Created study resources for friends (dm / email for more details)
Coached a friend to his 10k PR and created a training plan in the thick of exam prep
Watched Eliud Kipchoge break the marathon world record while completing multiple-choice questions a day before my physics paper (100% worth it)
Celebrated the end of exams (Nov 26, 2022) with a party:
Cheers! All in all, I’m glad that this chapter of my life has come to an end.