The Year that Changed My Life

Perhaps I was the oddball. But I was highly drawn to the fact that I would get to experience both working and living abroad for a year. Fast forward by two years to 2015 and I’m in Silicon Valley all ready to make my mark in the famed mecca of entrepreneurship and technology.

In the day, I went to work in one of the fastest growing startups in the Valley. And by night, I was pursuing courses at Stanford University. It might seem like a mouthful of at this point in time. But that was precisely how I had felt at that point of time — in complete awe that all my hard work had culminated into this unique opportunity. I was afraid of the unknown but have never felt so alive at the same time.

I was given the autonomy to work on a part of the company’s roadmap and manage a team of developers to help realize that vision. It was an interesting experience because it involved a lot of late night skype meetings, repeated iterations of product features and painful mistakes being made. But I’m glad that the entire team treated me as one of their own and with the same level of respect that any employee would get.

Apart from work, I also joined a couple of hackathons in my spare time. Hackathons are essentially competitions or events where a large number of people gather to collaborate in solving problems through computer programming. In Silicon Valley, tech meetups or events happen nearly on a daily basis due to the pervasiveness of technology in people’s lives. It was a really fun and exhausting experience as usually you would have to work on problem-solving for 24 hours straight. And I’m sure my friends would concur! Nonetheless, it is also a good opportunity to understand specific industries and their problems better.

Of course, there are also several opportunities for travelling although it would be much less than those on SEP. You will earn a basic stipend through your internship work and with a good amount of planning, you will be able to enjoy the finer side of life as well. I’ve went to several states throughout my year and did plenty of hiking, camping and even joined an adventure race! But I think one of the more important decisions I’ve made early on was to make it a point to go out every weekend even if it’s just to the city or a nearby café. After all, you should always make good use of the limited time that you have on NOC or on exchange to enjoy the foreign land.

A word of caution: spend within your means and be prudent with your salary. NOC is a good chance for you to experience full independence and simulate “actual adult-life”. Experiences are important but you do not have to go into the red in order to do so.

It’s been a long ride but here are some of the most important things that I’ve learnt during my NOC stint:

On the note about working in a foreign country, I had to quickly come up to speed with the American work culture and how to finagle my way out of tricky situations in the office. Unlike typical Singaporean internships, American companies are much more liberal and open in their culture. I recall having to share my honest opinion about a new product release just two days into my internship in a room full of C-suite executives and on another occasion, critique a sales director’s performance. A buttered version would work very well in the Singaporean context but in my company, I was expected to give useful feedback and insights instead. It took me a while to get used to the way conversations were going around the room as well as distinguishing humour from perfunctory courtesy! I also greatly appreciated the opportunity to have casual conversations with my company’s co-founder and to have daily team lunches where we can chat about NBA, travelling as well as politics. Mind you this was during the buildup to Trump’s presidency.

I think one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learnt was the need to continuously improve on my skills and the importance of peer-to-peer learning. It is easy, and all too dangerous, to become very comfortable in your work especially when things become routine. That was how I felt six months into my internship. It took me a while to recognize that I was coming up with excuses for my own inability to change. What I did next was to initiate new projects during my spare time and learn from people beyond my team. This learning stretches to even during school projects where I’ve found that I could learn so much from my peers from Business or Computer Science while pooling our knowledge together. I think this is very useful for those of you who are about to embark on your Industrial Attachments and I hope that you can always bear in mind that an internship is more than simply just taking orders from your supervisors. Learn quickly on the job and always aim to add value to your organization by improving processes or workflows, no matter how minute they might seem.

Although SEP would similarly allow you to step out of your comfort zone and discover interesting sights across the world, I would argue that you have never really lived like you would have during NOC. In contrast, NOC allows you to work full-time and make a living in order to pay the bills. Most of us have to source for our own accommodation, set-up our social security, opening bank accounts, buying second-hand cars among many others. All of which have been firsts to me. Not wanted to be dependent on my parents, I remember scrimping daily in order to get by for months because I had to deal pay for a car transmission problem. You also have to learn to deal with work politics in an unfamiliar culture while struggling to keep up with your school work concurrently. Life was hard but I’m pretty sure that most of us still enjoyed the experience regardless.

Looking back, I definitely do not regret my decision in going towards a different direction as opposed to my peers who did their industrial attachments instead. So, to all of you who are keen to hone your entrepreneurial acumen or simply explore an alternative experience as opposed to an engineering curriculum, I would encourage you to apply. It would be advisable to do so a year in advance so that you would have some leeway to prepare and go for interviews with NUS Enterprise and the respective startup companies. Also contact your seniors who have walked the same path and get their advice as well as understand the challenges that they have faced. It would definitely not be easy to step out due to the deep and niche domain that Chemical Engineering lies in and Competing with others from other faculties would also be demoralizing at times due to the perceived disparity in skillsets. However, to this I would encourage you to persevere. Begin with the end (goal) in mind and you will find that the reward would be totally worth it.

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