Millidream III: Lynn in secondary 1

Time flies. Today is the last day of term 1 school holidays, and Lynn will be back to school tomorrow. Due to Covid-19, her Sec 2 term 1 overseas trip planned for 12th/13th March was cancelled. Things were very abnormal in the first quarter of 2020, and will continue to be so for the rest of the year.

Last year, 2019, she attended RGS at Anderson road. In the morning, she would take bus 105 from the bus stop before Toa Payoh MRT to school. The bus journey takes about 20mins, mainly due to heavy morning traffic.

We attended the orientation for Sec1 parents. It was a proud day for all parents. A touching experience for me too, as I'm also from an all girls school. I know that Lynn will enjoy the school life in such an environment, so much girl chatter, so much girlish fun, and no distraction from "smelly" boys:).

The school term started slow, with very little home work and revision. But instead of picking up, it had stayed this way, even till now. I have been worried, still am, but there's nothing much that I can do except to encourage her to study more, and keep to the blind faith that the system is different from my time. At the beginning of this year, I arranged for Chinese tuition for her, as I'm afraid that her Chinese standard is stagnated. As for the rest of the subjects, I can only hope that she's able to learn well, although not "exam well".

RGS carries out CCA trials and selection instead of allowing the kids to sign up for whatever their greatest interest is. Lynn signed up for both art club and symphonic band trials (5 choices each kid). She did indicate that she will choose band (over art club), but she felt extremely disappointed that she failed the selection trial for art club. But other than the feeling of setback, joining the band (she was successful in band trial) is definitely more beneficial. She continues to draw on her own as a hobby. In the band, she learns to play the saxophone. So far, she enjoyed her band practices and performances greatly. Recently, she even requested to buy her own saxophone. I'm so excited that we are able to afford for her to learn another instrument.

Just 3 days ago (during March school hols), Lynn did her grade 5 piano practical exams. We were extremely lucky, cos the exams from the next day onwards got cancelled due to Covid-19. I think she will do well for grade 5, because she enjoyed the pieces, and I thought that she plays them reasonably well. For her piano performance this year (probably in Q3), she choose "Merry-go-round of life". Again I feel that she may be able to do better this year. Last year Jun, she played "Hikaru-Nara", but she didn't deliver it well. I'm glad that she's enjoying her piano a lot more this year. I wonder if it's due to influence from her classmates, who are probably much more "artsy" than her gang from primary school.

Lynn studied reasonably hard for year end exam. It was not "enough" from my perspective, but I can't baby her the way I did for her PSLE anymore now that she's in secondary school. I will have to keep a close watch for this year end, which is another critical year. At the beginning of this year, I realised that I will probably continue to worry for her for a long time to come. 养儿一百，长忧九十九。。She did better in her technical subjects, such as Math and Science. Her languages were her weakest. She enjoyed geography. I like RGS's unique subject, which is call Inquiry and Advocacy. It's like GP for secondary kids. There was a fun, "sensational" question in her year end exam paper that went like "Uncouth people makes bad partners; All RI boys are uncouth". Lynn told me that everyone talked about this question right after the exams ended.

In the last week of school term last year, RGS moved to Braddell Road. Nowadays, we leave home at 7am, and drop her off at school before 710. She comes home by feeder bus (2 bus stops only). Going to her school's open house last year brought back memories of my own end of J1 move from Bukit Gombak to new campus at Bukit Timah. New buildings doesn't have "souls", until probably a year into it. At the beginning of this year, we went for year 2 parents' talk, and it felt much more livelier.

The year 2 talk was very informative. I'm pleasantly surprised that the school allows all students to take their requested subject combination without the need to stream for it. So by July this year, we have to make the tough decision of whether to go for all 10 subjects or to take only 9. I only took 8 subjects, so I can't imagine how she can cope 10 subjects. But dropping geography or biology or Japanese seems such a waste.

Here are some pictures from last year:

First week of school, Anderson Road