A local demographer recently commented in a research report on societal norms that the focus in Singapore is not to enjoy life, but to keep score: in schools, in jobs, in income. Honestly, I won’t deny that as I’m a score-keeper myself. I rely on these scores to evaluate my own performance and make adjustments if necessary.

During the six semesters I spent at SMU, I kept score and came up with the following analysis of my performance. Overall, the trend for current performance appears to be mean-reverting; climbing, peaking, taking a sudden plunge before a slight recovery late on. Cumulative performance here proved the more accurate yardstick over time, remaining fairly stable throughout.

Looking at things on a course-by-course basis also shows a pretty consistent level of performance though there have been occasions when a slight deterioration in results was recorded. Fortunately, periods of outperformance have mostly cushioned the full impact of those dips.

On the whole, I’m pleased with my performance in relation to the amount of effort I’ve put in in these three-and-a-half years (including one semester on exchange). No doubt there had been a couple of disappointments but the surprises more than made up for them. It was a rather nervy ending though as a lacklustre swan song threatened to rain on my parade.