Had a great time catching up with some of my Japanese Language classmates during a gathering just now. As mentioned in my previous post, one of my them would need to return back to Japan permenantly with her 2 daughters, and they are leaving 2 weeks later. That's like so fast!! So yup, this is like a "farewell gathering" for her as well.

And one of them just quit his job last year, and last month he spent THE ENTIRE MONTH in Japan, going to different parts of Japan for holiday. He was like showing us all the photos that he took, and omg, I'm like so freaking jealous of him!!!! And the most amazing thing is he only spent 4.4K in total!? That's like so cheap lar, considering the fact that he stayed in Japan for 1 month. But owellz, because he bought the JR concession ticket that was exclusively available for foreigners only, he was able to cut down on alot of transport expense.

Another guy who's going to Toshiba to work this coming Oct, I asked him 1 freaking IMPORTANT question. Before that, I actually google-ed around for information, and found out that Japanese University doesn't have class honours lor. Like regardless of how well or how badly you do during your 4 years uni education, everyone will just get a "pass degree" with no indication of how good/badly you have done. Of course they can look at your uni transcript for all the grades, but it's like they only have 'A', 'B', 'C' or 'D'. Dont have like those retarded A+, A, A- etc, which I really hate.

Anyway, I just asked him whether his university result played a big role in securing his current job/determining his salary. But thankfully, as I expected, he said that employers really dont care about your university result. It's like they are more interested in your non-academic areas in selecting new employees, because as mentioned earlier, they dont really "distinguish" academically better or weaker applicants. So they rely heavily on interviews to judge a job applicant, with your academic result playing a very insignificant role in "boosting" your resume. Secondly, in Japanese society, salary is still afterall based on your seniority. So no matter how good or how bad you did in your uni, everyone's starting pay is STILL THE SAME, and at the end of the day, it still boils down to your work performance when it comes to promotion/salary rise.

Hence, I felt "less stressted" that I will be significantly disadvantaged to those 1st class ppl. Like seriously, I have to admit I definitely cannot fight with ppl when it comes to academic result. And neither am I trying to say that my non-academic areas are excellent or have good CCA records or whatever. But I just HATE it when companies rely heavily on your academic result in choosing applicants, and your salary is based on the class honours that you get. This is especially true in Singapore, where there is such a great emphasis on your result, when I have people COMPLAINING that he has 4 A+ but 1 A, which leaves a "scar" on the cert. Like... shit... if A+ and A make such a HUGH difference to them, I think my transcipt is filled with multiple DEEP SCARS already.

And well, not that I will heck care about my results anymore. I probably would try to study hard at least for this sem and my last sem, but I really really should not be too "mindful" about my grades/result until it grows into an unhealthy obsession for good honours/good grades. I do admit I used to be competitive and mindful about grades in the past, but at this point of time, I realized that life is too short to be too engrossed in this rat race. Enough is enough. If I can get a 2nd upper, then it's a BONUS to me. If I get a 2nd lower, then well, life still goes on and I'm not going to go bersek like it will be the end of world (which I think some of my classmates are like that).

I still have a 20% company law assignment to be handed up tomorrow, and I haven started yet. Good luck to me~!