Prompt

Write The Essay of Your Life For Your Colonisers

You’ll be graded.

You’re amidst a sea of fully pubescent teens, separated mandatorily a good 1.5 metres from one another; not in attempts to curb any infectious disease transmissions, but rather to abate cheating.

Not that one could successfully manage to cheat in a General Paper examination.

For the uninitiated, General Paper — as with its namesake — is literally a paper you take about…general issues. A rather poor attempt in naming schematics, if you ask me. Yet it isn’t a far cry from what one could expect considering how the education system in Singapore has neither a modicum of creativity in educating their future leaders (or whatever patriotic propaganda you want to believe in), or incentive to be creative.

After all, the entire major examination structure is still based off an archaic, colonial system. Students’ examination answers are even sent off to the good old colonial masters for grading. So much for independence and post-colonialism.

Here’s a document if you want to better understand the bores and drags of the British Ordinary and Advanced Level Qualifications.

Back to main point of cheating before I got side-tracked by throwing shade on Motherland’s “best and brightest” churning education system:

Cheating in a General Paper examination is a marvel yet to be documented.

Source: me.

Invigilator’s comments: Source is not valid. Needs supported and documented sources, not speculative sources. Argument is not concise, student wavers back and forth in a series of ramblings rather than having a concise, academic writing/argument.

How an individual could manage to cheat off another student’s verbal diarrhoea of randomly selected issues, solutions, and criticisms about a generic topic honestly baffles me.

General paper questions are vague, all encompassing, while simultaneously utterly lacking in diversity. Questions such as this, which Wei Xiang has craftily proposed I answer:

How far is the pursuit of happiness the most important human goal?

I guarantee you at least 5/100 student would allude to The Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith, as a cheeky response to the question. Unbeknownst to them, their sense of humour will most certainly not be received well by their ageing colonial examiners who will scarcely be able to tell the 1990s apart from the 2010s.

Source: speculation.

Invigilator’s comments: Source is not valid. Needs supported and documented sources, not speculative sources.

Back to actually answering the damn question.

How far is the pursuit of happiness the most important human goal? You stare at your list of 10 (I think?) questions presented to you. This one stands out the most. Simply because you’re unhappy.

Life isn’t what you would have expected it to be at age 18. This isn’t what Netflix shows you. Your American teen counterparts are making money through some drop-shipping company, flaunting their YouTube channel to the masses on their Tik Tok accounts. Their university acceptance letters have been sent out based on their accumulative GPA or CAP or whatever 3 letter acronym grading system they use. They have girlfriends. Or boyfriends. They drive cool cars and have cool clothes.

You’re nothing compared to them. You sit in a large stuffy hall with about 400 other students, donned in your scratchy, fire-proof (for no apparent reason), grey and navy school uniform that shows pit stains all too visibly. Your armpits are now sweating because despite being at least 1.5 metres away from the next student, your thick, fire-proof uniform is inhibiting any sort of air flow or even breathability for your teenage skin.

You are miserable. I am miserable. This essay is giving me flashbacks to my own teenage years in the Motherland, reminding me how unhappy I was, and how quickly I took the chance to escape what I deem as a prison to creativity and expression.

Invigilator’s comments: This is not valid example. Your individual anecdotal evidence is not a good choice of evidence. This is not your diary.

How far is the pursuit of happiness the most important human goal? Extremely far. My happiness is far reached, and lies far ahead. Life is shit, with no end in sight.

Of course happiness is the most important human goal; why do something you’re not happy with, or something that makes you miserable?

Money, I reckon. Money makes the world go round, and without money in this god forsaken economic world, lives will be lost. There is no happiness to think about in death.

Invigilator’s comments: ???

Death is inevitable. Much like this fucking General Paper examination. Better get it over with then:

The pursuit of happiness is a powerful and omnipresent philosophical investigation, capable of empowering individuals to achieving their goals. Yet, can this sentiment really be held accountable for reinforcing and spreading stereotypes that may be harmful to society? It is undeniable that in the current epoch, traditional and new views on the hierarchy of human goals are both beginning to correct stereotypes and spread empowering messages more and more. However, I would agree to a large extent that the pursuit of happiness is still not the most important human goal because it has a significant hand in creating harmful bias in society.

I copied and replaced the key words offered in the question into a common template introduction paragraph recommended to students to begin with in their General Paper Examination.

I guess one general size really does fit all.

“Creativity”.

Editor’s note:

My colonial invigilators scored me a D for my General Paper Examination at the Advanced Level Qualifications way back in the early 2010s, so don’t take my word for it.

The question I answered back then?

“Taking risks is an essential part of life and should be encouraged.” Discuss.

This entire essay has been a god damn risk. Righto, Motherland.