Singapore is culturally known as one that has extreme focus on academics and grades. Therefore, it is no surprise that around finals week, the level of stress for all students is at an all time high. The libraries gets packed, and sometimes students even sleep overnight in the libraries while studying. I too got sucked in to the culture and fell into a state of high stress, reviewing all my lecture notes, re-watching all my lectures, and repeatedly doing practice final exams.
I think that NUS students study just as hard (or harder) than NU students for sure. They are all highly motivated and I think the fact that all classes are graded on a bell curve push every student harder, since they are in the end all competing against each other. I felt that Northwestern’s final culture, albeit still stressful, was a little bit more lax than in NUS. I strongly felt this way especially after my first final. NUS has separate venues for examinations (meaning you don’t just take the finals in your classroom), and they are gymnasium-sized buildings, with rows upon rows of tables, filled with students from multiple classes. This kind of mass standardized testing setting only furthered my test anxiety.
As stressful as it was, at least I got to study in the warmth of the constant summer in Singapore, rather than the cold atrocious winters of Chicago.
