~JcZw

Pros are over. Anyone who blog hops around the blogs of various Med students will know that much. But well, never count your follicles before they ovulate. Results are yet to come. Am praying that I'll pass cleanly. There are many ifs which only God knows.

I've been in St. John for 8 years now, 5 of which I've seen the handovers, seen the berets fly after the graduating squad does its final parade. Of the three I couldn't come, it was due to sickness, fencing and NS in that order.

Of the 5 that I was present, 2 was as a cadet, 2 I actually participated in the post-parade tekan-ing (recall, KokKeng and his encounter with the water from the AHS fountain heh), and of course, the most memorable one of which my own squad was part of. Seeing handover as a cadet, an NCO and a senior gives many different perspectives.

Still, things have changed a lot. Maybe I flatter my squad to say that we had one of the most variable experiences in our course of duty. We experienced the old way, the Friday afternoon hell, where a CCA with less than 30 push ups was almost non-existent. We had the period of transition, and we had a taste of the new culture to come before we graduated. It was 3 CCAs after our handover before Soo yee and I first punished anyone.

We experienced victory in competition (Recall watching my squadmates, just sec 2, mere privates, crossing swords, or should I say, bandages, with the sergeants and corporals of the other corps). We also experienced loss, in what our seniors called "our best category" no less.

We experienced the old August-august work year, then suddenly the new June-june one was sprung on us. How Jiayan, Wei Quan, Wei Lun, Soo Yee, Evelyn and the others frantically tried to cook up a plausible new work year to satisfy our seniors (who at that time didn't hesitate to punish the NCOs, even in front of cadets as I recall). And of all the things which happened during our term, the thing we left our mark on the most, was in fact not competition, but in HP.

All the different experiences perhaps gives us a jaded point of view for the division. Like "we did it, why can't they" attitude, which may or may not be good. Sure, we have a wealth of experience which few others can match, but I'm sure no NCO batch likes to hear repeated exhortations of "In my year hor, we......"

The point is, St. John now for cadets, NCOs and even seniors, is nothing like what I remember it to be. I guess that's not so much important cos our most outstanding job is still that of being able to treat anything from a mere abrasion to a greenstick fracture. Of being drilled until our body takes over automatically when we see someone injured.

I do not respect the latter batches less. Every batch has its own challenges which I'm sure they will remember for life. Similarly, each batch has people whom I would trust if I had them as comp team mates, as well as people whom I wouldn't want to do PD with at a school fire drill. That said, I would never train a competition team unless I respected their members and felt they deserved to be trained. My tolerance for slackness is has quite a low threshold haha.

Its just that maybe I'm getting old and inflexible. Change is not all bad, but its something I cannot get used to so easily. But there, I've been one of the most unorthodox people in SJ, so my opinions usually are a bit skewed.

Its gonna be an interesting year ahead. I'll leave it to Ncomp before deciding what my fuure commitment should be.