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Read about why these two aspiring freshman decided to take up Civil Engineering
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Why Civil Engineering?
By, Wong Xianling, CE1
Well, I’ve got to start with some introduction of sorts. My name is Xianling. I like to draw, art and craft and anime. I like music of all kinds; pop, rock, rap, slow, dance, trance, techno, classical except for black metal and some rock. Though I like all kinds, I prefer songs sung with strong vocals like Christina Aguilera, Avril Lavigne, Shakira and Kelly Clarkson maybe. I play the piano and violin. I have been studying and living in Malaysia all my life though I was born here in Singapore.
Back in school, Yr 10, meaning Form 4, when I started to pick subjects I wanted to study, I chose a subject called Design and Technology. In this subject, I learned how to design just about anything and everything; workstation, hand-held gaming devices, bottle carriers, board games and lots more. Truthfully, I took the subject because I thought it would be good to have a balance between science and art. I took Chemistry, Physics, English, Malay, Math, Additional Math, Accounting, Design and Technology. As you can see, the subjects I took were a little ‘rojak’ because at that time, I still had no idea what I would like to do later on. So I took Design and Technology for the sake of taking it then.
My dad actually was an architect or should I say qualified draughtsman before he branched out into the printing and packaging business where he would design the packages for his clients and produce it for them, for example like packaging for car amplifiers; amplifiers like ‘Prokick’ and show racks like the stands they use to put the shampoos on like the racks for ‘Pantene.’ So, the designing parts appealed to me as I always watched my dad coming up with ideas for the projects and designing them and sometimes, I would add a few ideas myself. Thus, as I continued to study Design and Technology, the more interesting and fun it became and as I continued to join my dad at work, I began to understand my dad’s love for this kind of thing.
By the time I was in college, I had half-formed decisions in my mind. My dad would always tell me stories about the tough times he had as an architect and usually I would help my dad at work and after experiencing the hardships of the job and hearing all the stories, I decided to take up engineering instead with one aim; to try to get an engineering course as closely related to designing as I could. So what happened to Accounting you ask me? Well, I never liked it. No offence meant, but everything to do with Accounting seemed so methodical and everything has to be done step-by-step and I actually prefer studying something more random and creative. So the best thing was engineering and I chose that for college. By the time I was in university, the closest I could get to the designing part was civil engineering. I can decide what to build and how to build it, how to construct and plan out the landscape of a place so that it’s habitable. Imagine being part of the process of constructing a place which was perfect for us all to live in.
You know, come to think of it there was this game quite a while back called ‘ SIM City.’ Anyone remember this game? Basically, this game is all about building your own city from scratch; you just have money and the land and you have to use the tools needed to start building factories, schools, homes, electricity generators and waterworks. I had fun... Did you? Well, this played a small part in my choice as well I guess. =)
