2nd post.

Almost twelve weeks have passed since school has started and I am beginning to adapt to the polytechnic lifestyle. Living in Pasir Ris, travelling to school has been a strain to me as I live in Pasir Ris. Although it takes nearly two hours to get to school, I'm slowly getting used to the long distance and periods of time by adapting. I have learnt that polytechnic requires much more independent learning compared to secondary school and that we must be well-informed of our modules and assignments which are constantly uploaded on our school portal. Another part of polytechnic life is that it involves a lot more project group work which emphasizes a lot on teamwork and working skills with other people.

As time goes by, conflicts rise and friendships strengthen. Engaging with your classmates from different walks of life enables me to compromise to other's working style during group work. Another quality I have managed to cultivate is to motivate and push fellow group members to do their work as they might not have the right mood or mindset to perform at their best. Yet another skill I have improved is my ability to talk in front of the class, or my presentation skills. As more and more of my school work are becoming project work which grades are based mostly on presentation. I have learnt to be more confident to speak during presentations and have more self-esteem in myself by rehearsing my presentation and practicing my speaking skills as I have conversations with people like my friends.

What I've learnt in LMS, in fact, has helped me in a way to deal with my polytechnic adaptations and stress. One example is to get over my secondary school lifestyle and how well I did for my Ordinary Levels and adapt to changes in polytechnic. I have learnt that whatever happened in the past doesn’t matter anymore, as we’re all in our posted courses, and it’s the present we should be more concerned about. By forgetting the past, it helps me to adapt faster to this new lifestyle in polytechnic almost 30km away from home. This became essential to me as I am from a pioneer course, Business and Social Enterprise- a course that was a blend of both business and social work. Those that were with me in my course were either unknowing of their course, or had no choice but to come over to this course due to insufficient academic merit. Because I forced myself to change and put my past behind me in secondary school, I managed to slowly influence my course mates to adapt into the course we were in too.

Another example is that I’ve learnt how confident and how much self-esteem I have, and also how to improve it for better presentation skills during my project work. By acknowledging my worth in my tasks and achievements, I learn to appreciate the qualities I am good in and thus help me better overcome any self-esteem problems I might come across. I have learnt that by judging yourself by your own targets, a lot can actually be achieved rather than letting other people put you down, especially in group projects when lecturers and students have to criticise your work for the sake of self-improvement in doing your work. I have also learnt in improving myself that there’s nothing great about being better than someone or some other group, as it is learning from our former self’s that really determine our success. We should run our own race together, not against each other, and do it at our own pace.

Yet another adaptation I have adopted is that of when I am working with other people for group project work. I applied this when I had to compromise with people in my group who might have different working styles as me. As different people from different backgrounds with different skills come together with different patterns of getting their job done, the solution is mainly to meet up once, distribute the work evenly. As I get to know my group members, I would take to note their strengths and weaknesses, their skills and working styles. I would usually distribute the type of work according to what the person’s good in doing. This gets the work done more efficiently as group members are working on parts of the project that they’re best at, producing optimum quality of work.

This method doesn’t guarantee efficiency all the time however, as some group members might be hard to motivate and push to do their assigned task for the project. By offering simple rewards like sweets, or even a lunch treat, it makes it easier for me to drive them to be determined to work their best for the particular project work.

Because they are motivated to work, also doesn’t assure quality of the work as they might just rush through their work just for the sake of completing the work. As a result work comes in quick but with minimum effort put in. During that point of time for project work when that happens, I would usually begin to have regular group meetings to gradually but surely improve the quality of our project work. Encouraging group members to give comments and feedback on ways to enhance the quality of our combined work also works as more brainstorming can sometimes lead to great ideas.

During the course of many projects with group members, I also progressively learnt to manage my anger as previously taught from life management skills classes. Although classified as an unconstructive emotion, this module has taught me to convert this negative feeling into something more constructive and beneficial for the group. For example, when a person in the group does his work that is not up to standard of major of the group members, we would tell him in the nicest possible way that his performance has room for improvement. We would help him improve his performance if he needed and asked for help. Such talks are usually held in a very open manner, so that constructive peer evaluation can be received by the group member. This avoids conflict in the group among the members when they are not working to expectations as it does not involve pointing of fingers or pushing or responsibility during such project work.

I have also learnt never to over-commit to too many things in school like my CCAs and other school events. Such “out of curriculum” activities are fun, but sometimes time management for all of such things are critically important as my course and its modules tops in my list of priorities. I have also changed from managing from previously more than 4 CCAs, to my current two- NPStrings and Catholic Youth Apostolate. By having lesser CCAs, it enables me to focus more on practicing my violin and developing and restoring the almost dissolved Catholic Youth Apostolate to its former activeness. It also allows more time for my school work, and overall, for me.

Although I’m still not perfect in managing my time, stress, anger, this life management skills module has still taught me to improve my adapting process to the polytechnic and helped me develop myself into a better person to other people. Most people always tell me, “Matthew, you can’t possibly please everyone in the world.” But now I tell them, “I can always try.”

Life Management Skills

HYO. (that's short for hey yo.)

YAY A BLOGGING ASSIGNMENT. I SO TOTALLY DIDN'T EXPECT THIS. :D

*takes a deep breath*

hope i don't bore you with this long post.

i'm o level cert holder, matthew han. (matt/matty)



they call me matty from st patty. i infested planet earth on the 31st of july, 1991 and i share that same birthday with harry potter.



16 turning 17 this year, i hail from st patrick's school, a lasallian instituion some of you may know it from the slacker school opposite chij kc.

i came from three secondary schools before that, jumping schools has a changed streams from normal technical to express by the time i came to st pats in secondary two. :)

since then, adapting to changes was part and parcel of life.





president of photography club, and vice president of my very own peer support board. i LOVE taking photos,



especially during camps. (so bear with my photos. xD) it is during times like these in school where i would allow both my passions to drive me to advocate my services to my ex-school so strongly. as vice president of the peer support board, i heavily instill servant leadership into my juniors. that they are more of GUIDES leaders than LEADING leaders.



a strong believer in the lasallian spirit- to help the last, the lost, and the least, i have participated/facilitated in many lasallian camps around singapore for youth leaders in other lasallian schools like sji, st pats, and even sji international. our mission, is to include rather than to exclude. just like how the founder of lasallian schools, st john baptist de lasalle, also the patron saint of teachers, was.



the statue of the founder, with my friends and i trying to pose their stances.

through it all, i have also learnt that there is such thing as the poor and marginalised in singapore by volunteering my free time along with my friends to help poverty become a thing of the past.



okay enough of lasalle, and more about me!

as you already know, i LOVEEEEE taking photos!

(don't find me weird, its just ME.)



my two dearest things in the world,



coke lime and rubik's cubes. :D

i've been playing the rubik's cube since i was a kid when my mum bought it from some pasar malam. learnt how to solve it only recently, and still learning faster ways of solving it. XD



i have an older sister who is currently studying in australia,



her eyes simply refuse to show on this image, but that's precisely why i uploaded this photo. :D

we skype every sunday to keep telling/reminding/convincing ourselves we're the best handidjaja kids our parents could have.

(p.s. yes, my surname in indonesian is handidjaja. if you were asking. my dad's indonesian.)

(p.s.s. and for people who think she's hot, i'll tell you a secret, its just the make-up. xD)



i used to help out in st anthony's primary school,



especially for those with special needs as they are left behind in school for various purposes like camps where they are not allowed to go just because of their conditions.

i'm not a sports person but,

i do enjoy music. a lot.



i play the piano, guitar, drums, bass, ukelele and the... SOUND RECORDER.

lol. ANYONE INTERESTED IN STARTING A BAND? (i play badly! LOL.)

never been to music lessons, nor have i been graded in anyway.

to me i believe that music is something that should be opened for appreciation to all. not just the rich who can enjoy such privillages.

self-taught, self-learnt, self-expressed.











okay, now for the hard part.

why did i join BZSE?

hm... whenever i go out with my friends during the holidays after we got our posting results, they would ask me,

"EH MATTHEW, WHAT'S YOUR COURSE ON AH. BUSINESS AND SOCIAL ENTERPRISE ON WHAT ONE."

i would just answer,

"aiya, its just another high class name for those nkf people lah. I FUTURE GOLDEN TAP OWNER LEH."



then when the holidays slowly inched to its end, it slowly began to hit me. why did i choose business and social enterprise in the first place? why am i so calm about going to ngee ann poly everyday when it takes me almost two hours to travel from home? (yes i live in pasir ris. bless me.) why didn't i desperately appeal for the psychology courses i want?

those questions kept ringing in my mind, louder and louder, with each passing day.



i love helping people. its sort of a calling. business and social enterprise was my third choice. my first and second, psychology from both ngee ann and temesak respectively. but my grades didn't qualify, and i ended up with you people! for me, i firmly believe that helping to bring joy to others brings about joy in yourself too. and this joy of helping from me was bred only when i exprienced by people not only poor of material needs, but also the rejected and the lonely.



so why do i want to make my best out of these three years in ngee ann poly?

its about the september trip to yunan that a handful lucky of us would go to.

its about witnessing people in need to help us see.

its about being so inspired to do god's work.

its about helping people that seems so real.



its about real poverty. its about its about real people. its about real human lives.

surely something this real cannot be felt through imagination or thoughts, right?

it must be exprienced.

and such expriences are abundant here in this school in forms of opporunities.















okay i think i have gone far enough. a little carried away from what i think. :D

just couldn't sleep and wait for school tomorrow, with the knowledge that i have to wake up early to come to school on time.

OH AND ONE MORE THING, i'm highly nocturnal too. which makes me very very very energetic at night, and hyperactive during the day. just bear with my overzealous attitude for these few days, i'll try to change this bad habit of mine! >.<

(this is life management skills afterall!)


to life management skills,
CHEERS. :D