1. DECISION MAKING

Did you go to JC/Poly? What subjects were you pursuing before university, and were they related to your university course?

I’m from Hwa Chong JC. I took Biology, Chemistry, Math, Economics and General Paper. My subjects are related to my course. The course requirements are at least H1 or equivalent pass in Mathematics and a good H2 or equivalent pass in Physics, Chemistry or Biology, and at least an O Level or equivalent pass in Chinese Language.

 

What courses were you considering, and what were the factors that personally shaped your decision? If you’re doing a double major/degree, what made you decide on that?

I did consider Food Science and Technology. I think it’s partially because I have an interest in TCM. The fact that there’s a double degree with Biomedical Science gives me more options to choose from. There are 2 paths. In the case I decide not to focus fully on TCM, I can always choose to do research with my Biomedical Science degree. The reason why I joined this course is actually because I went to South Korea and there’s this medical street in Daegu. That was where I started getting interested in Traditional Korean Medicine (TKM) which is very closely related to TCM. Since I was young, I’ve always wanted to do something related to the healthcare industry and help people.

Viewing the history, herbs, processes, and other information on TKM reminded me of a medical show, Dae Jang Geum. It presented a way of medicine where it involved things such as herbs which can be found naturally, exhibiting the miracles and how there is a harmony and balance both within the body as well as with our surroundings. The reasons why I chose to study TCM instead of western medicine include the point on how TCM focuses a lot more on the harmony of the body and places emphasis on curing the root causes rather than simply the visible symptoms. There are some illnesses which Western medicine can’t really fix. For example, they’ll give you painkillers if you have a headache. Whereas for TCM, they will actually diagnose you to see what’s the source of your headache. Also, some of my seniors are actually interested in being both physicians and researchers at the same time which is something that I may consider as well.

 

How did you decide on your school eventually?

NTU is the only school that offers something like this. If you choose to do TCM, it’ll be a private TCM university or school. But for the 6 publicly-funded autonomous universities in Singapore, only NTU has something related to TCM and they don’t offer TCM as a single degree. It’s also the only school with this double degree.

 

2. TEACHING CURRICULUM

What’s your course structure like? 

For semester 2, I have 7 courses. Because it’s a double degree, we actually have more Academic Units (AUs) than the average for every semester, at around 22 AUs. Our timetable is more full than that of the other degrees. In NTU, there’s something called the Student Automated Registration System (STARS) where people have to fight for the modules that they have to take. For example, if the module has its lecture on 2 different days, they have to fight for whichever fits their timetable. But for us, everything is pre-planned mainly because our timetable is very full. There isn’t much shifting that we can do. We have classes from Monday to Friday. I think for the other single degrees, you could have 2-3 days free sometimes.

The courses are semester-based. Exams are mostly individual and we do not have many projects. There are no reading weeks or sabbatical terms.

 

How is a day in the life of a student in your course & school like?

Honestly, if you’re the kind who’s very good at time management, you could probably still do Hall activities, join EXCOs or take up other leadership positions. Our earliest classes start at 8.30. We go for our classes and we get our breaks in between. We end at 5-6 pm on average. I guess we still have a life but we’re mainly with our classmates and the people in the same course. During exam periods, we’ll just study everyday.

 

What is the format of your assessments/exams like?

With Covid, it’s still physical. For the Biomedical side, I would say it’s mostly MCQ. But for the TCM side, it’s a full-length paper. There are MCQs and also open-ended short answer questions. There are even fill in the blanks or close passage questions. I think there may be essay writing questions in future. The TCM exams are always in Chinese but the Biomed ones are in English. In semester 2, we also had to do Computational Thinking including coding which is group project style.

 

How heavy would you say the workload for your course is compared to an average student in your university?

I would say it’s at least double. I have friends in Accounting or English Literature. When they showed me their timetable, it was basically 2 days of lectures and tutorials, and they weren’t really full. And there may be another day with just 1 tutorial or 1 lecture. So, they basically have about 2.5 days free at least. They can do more of whatever they want like watch kdrama and all. But for us, the only free time we have are meal breaks and evenings. If we have to go out or meet up with anyone, it would have to be having meals like lunch or dinner together. I’d say the workload is pretty heavy. However, most other people have a lot of grading based on their presentations and projects. For us, we don’t have them. It’s all studying for mid years and finals. For the TCM side before Covid, we had to fly in the professors from China. Due to a Visa issue, they will usually cramp the whole module to half the semester. But even with Covid, it’s still happening although we’re having lectures online with our China professors. So, we have our midterms at around week 4 and finals at week 7 which is recess week for other people. For semester 2, we didn’t have the TCM modules after week 7 anymore because of this. But for the other modules, they added in stuff such as our Biochemistry practicals and we had different sessions compared to other people because of our schedule. Every semester is different in the way they arrange our modules and timetables and not every semester has the same number of Biomed or TCM modules. For example, anatomy was a full semester module in semester 1, whereas the basics of TCM was a half semester module that started after recess week.

 

There are often certain skills or content knowledge that you learn in university that can be learnt outside of school independently. Would you say there’s a difference between learning this knowledge/skills independently versus in university? What knowledge/skills would you say can only be learnt from your course?

Maybe there’s a difference for the academic side of TCM. If you do TCM externally as a single degree, you’d take 5 year full time and 7 years if you do part time. For us, we are taking 5 years but we get to have a second degree as well. I would definitely say it’s a lot more rushed. We’d probably be a lot better in time management when we leave this course. But for the knowledge on TCM, you’d probably learn the same things elsewhere, just that you may take a longer time.

The only one I can think of is being bilingual in our course. Our English still has to be good enough to do the Biomedical Science part, yet we cannot neglect Chinese because that’s the TCM part. That’s one really special thing about our course — how the East meets West. You have to be equally proficient in both. If not, either side would probably pull down your grades. But I’d say if you are just entering the course and your Chinese isn’t that good, I think that’s still fine as long as you’re attentive in class and try to learn over the years. Because honestly, a lot of the Chinese terms that you learn are terms you’ve probably never seen before. It’s not conversational Chinese but a lot of medical names.

 

Are there specialisations within your degree? If yes, when do you have to choose your specialisation, and what specialisation have you chosen?

Not really. Within this degree, we do physio, Tui Na and orthopedic. We also learn about gynaecology (妇科) and children (儿科). We learn all those specialisations in the 2 years when we are in China. We don’t really specialise in any of those because we have to learn basically almost everything.

 

How are the faculty / professors of your course like? Any favourite professors!

For the TCM side, they’re all from Beijing University of Chinese Medicine (BUCM). All of them are from China and they speak Chinese. They’re all quite friendly generally.

I like my anatomy professor. He’s been teaching students of this course anatomy for several years now. He’s a surgeon in Singapore. He’s called Li Shi Qi.

Are there any final year projects / capstones / thesis to do?

Yes, there is. In Y4-5, we’ll go over to China. Our final year project starts after Y3 ends. But I think for other people, the final year project is within their semester. For us, we fly over to China immediately once the final year project ends. So, the 3 months summer break is when we work on our final year project. It does seem as though it’s stealing our summer break. And after we go over to China, my seniors said that it’ll be something like having a test every 2 weeks.

 

3. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE / PREFERENCES

What were your most and least favourite/interesting classes/part of your course?

My least favourite part is definitely the amount of content. Every TCM module covers one book of content. In semester 1, we finished 2 books. And in semester 2, we finished one more. There’s a lot of content and it goes really fast. For example, we did Ancient Chinese in semester 2 and we basically had lectures everyday that tallied about 15h a week. The content is crazy and all that happens while we have our other Biomedical Science modules.

I guess my favourite part is going through all of it with my classmates. Every year, there’s only 1 class. We will be quite close to our class eventually because we all study together and it’s a lot of time spent together.

 

What are some thing(s) you didn’t know/expect about the course before starting, and what surpassed your expectations?

There aren’t really. I think I already expected there to be a heavy workload. I did hope that with Covid, they could spread out the TCM modules to the whole semester instead of still cramming them into half a semester.

One thing is the amount of support that we still get even though we’re in university. For the Biomedical Science side for example, the professors may set up dates for us to ask them questions or we can just email them whatever questions we have. It’s not like we’re left all alone to defend ourselves. Even for the TCM side, the professors do try to help and guide us to study better. I feel I receive more support than I thought university would provide.

 

Are there any common misconceptions/stereotypes about your course that you would like to debunk?

There’s definitely one that you need good Chinese to enter. As long as you can converse and understand Chinese, I think that’s good enough so long you have a strong passion for it. Some of my classmates may not be the most fluent or the most proficient in Chinese. I guess whenever you don’t understand something, it’s still fine as long as you make an effort to go and find out what it actually is and you are not totally new to Chinese.

And there’s also the one where you can’t have a life. If you have very good time management, it’s still doable. A lot of my classmates are taking up EXCO positions. I personally am as well. Some of my friends are leading freshmen orientation programmes and being the Main Group Leaders (MGL), and some are being involved in Hall activities like Hall dance.

 

Were there times when you regretted your decision? / Is there anything that you didn’t particularly enjoy about your course?

Not yet! I guess I assumed that “Biomedical Science and TCM” only encompassed Biology and other medicine related modules, but was mildly taken aback when I realised that we had to continue with subjects such as Chemistry and Mathematics. One example would be our Biostatistics module which builds on knowledge from JC statistics. We also have modules such as coding. While I can’t say that these modules were not enjoyable, I wasn’t as prepared for them and that could be why I personally enjoyed the TCM modules a lot better. I did not expect modules such as Biostatistics and Coding to be in my course. Rather, I’m not as proficient in those. What I was expecting was more of science and medical science. But we still had to do them. I think it’s mainly because Biomedical Science involves research, and Biostatistics and Computer Science would really help in our research especially if it involves large volumes of data.

 

Are there many people who switch out of your course? Do a lot of students in your course retain?

There have been quite a few. I think every year, there are quite a few. It varies year to year. But over this first year, there were 2-3 who left in the first two weeks and changed course. At the end of semester 1, two people changed course to Biological Sciences. I think one wasn’t doing that well on the TCM side and it was pulling down her average. So, she decided to just do a single degree. The workload is difficult to cope with. I think there’s a senior who actually dropped out at the end of Y3, so he left with just the Biomedical Science degree because he felt he wasn’t ready to have the heavy workload in Beijing.

I think usually, you wouldn’t retain. You’d probably still pass at least. For the Biomedical Science side, it should be fine as there’s a bell curve. I haven’t really heard of any retain stories. But if you do fail a core module, you’d have to do it again in your subsequent year. We call it “dabao” (takeaway). In semester 2, we actually had a senior who also had to attend the lectures for the TCM module that we took.

 

What sort of student do you think would excel in / be suited for your course? Or what should one like (e.g. working with numbers, presentations) in order to enjoy your course?

Someone who doesn’t give up, is determined and willing to learn. He/she is also proactive in the sense that if you don’t understand anything, you really have to go and ask. The TCM professor is not here and there’s probably a lot of new terms, and your friends may not know the answer as well. You really have to go and find out by asking the teachers yourself.

 

4. CAREER PROSPECTS

What are the career prospects like for your course?

For the Biomedical Science side, we could do research mainly but some office jobs as well. For the TCM side, we could be a physician or start our clinic. Another choice is to go into health and wellness because TCM talks about the body and wellness as well. We could even do postgraduate medicine if we want. We have seniors doing that. For example, we could go on to Duke NUS to do Western medicine. After we graduate, we would be proficient in both Western and Chinese medicine.

 

Would you say you went into your course already making the decision to pursue a career related to your course? What are your plans after university? 

Yes, I did. I do consider the postgraduate medicine path, or I may do a PhD in the TCM or Biomed field. Otherwise, I would become a TCM physician first. I personally hope to be able to globalise the whole concept of TCM. There’s a lot of stigma around TCM, especially in the younger generation. A lot still don’t believe in it. So, I want to be able to raise awareness and bring it to other countries that may not really have heard of TCM much. I think it’s something with a long history and it has been proven to benefit a lot of people. There are increasingly more countries believing in TCM as well. Especially with the recent Covid situation where TCM was able to cure Covid patients, this success caused a sudden urge in interest towards the TCM field and brought a great deal of attention to TCM.

 

Did you have any internships/work experience related to your career and did your school give you sufficient training & resources? Otherwise, where else did you find them?

I would say the most related one was nursing as a caregiver with Homage. I tried that at the start of last year, before I accepted the course. That’s the most closely related one. I think it’s harder to find internships that attach you to a TCM physician but I do hope to find one in Y2/3.

In Y4-5, we will be attached to the Beijing Hospital. But my seniors aren’t able to go over to China because of Covid, so they are doing their attachment with the NTU TCM clinic right at our school, the School of Biological Sciences (SBS). We can always go over and look at all the herbs. There’s a lecture room inside with all the skeleton and muscle models as well.

I think we can also apply for an internship with the NTU clinic after these 5 years. We still need to get a Singapore internship for us to actually practise in Singapore. There’s a minimum number of hours — at least 1 year of clinical attachment, including at least 403 hours of structured TCM Clinical Training. We still need to accumulate that number of hours for an internship in Singapore and pass the Singapore TCM Physicians Registration Examination (STRE). So, I think you can apply with the NTU clinic for that internship.

 

5. STUDENT LIFE

Did you stay in campus accommodation? Do many of your friends stay on campus?

I didn’t but I am going to stay next year. For Y1-2 in NTU, we’re guaranteed hostel accommodation if we want. I would say the ones who live further would stay because NTU is quite far from most places. Unless we live in the Jurong West area, we would probably be in halls.

 

How is the school culture like and how would you describe the people? What should students entering your school take note of?

For the SBS side, we’re all quite friendly. And honestly, every school day is quite dressed down. Unlike other schools like Business school that have everyone all dressed up, our school’s students sometimes go in very casual wear such as baggy clothes. The people in SBS don’t really care about appearances. We can dress however we want. At the start of Y1, we have TCM and SBS orientation. So, we’ll get to know people from SBS who are not doing TCM as well. I think that’s good.

Not really. I think the people are generally quite okay.

 

What were your CCAs?

I’m in Salsa En Sync and I’ll be the Vice Chair of the club next year.

 

What other opportunities have you made use of in university e.g. overseas exchange ? Which do you cherish most?

For other students with other degrees, I think you can sign up for overseas exchange programmes. But for our course, I’m not sure if we’re not allowed to or if our course structure just can’t fit in one more exchange. We actually have our own overseas exchange in Y2/3 where we will likely get a chance to go to the mountains to search for herbs and learn more about them.

 

Any parting words or advice for juniors? :,)

Come into this course if you have a really strong passion for TCM. If you have the passion, you will do well. You need that passion to be able to overcome all that stress that you may face in this course, or actually any other course. Even if you’re not that academically inclined or not the best in Chinese, it’s still fine to try out for this course as long as you have the passion. Follow your heart and all the best!