An alumna from the class of 2019, Tiffany is currently pursuing her undergraduate studies in economics and statistics at McGill University in Canada. From economics to physics to technology, Tiffany’s interests span multiple fields. She is also the president of the Society for Undergraduate Mathematics Students (SUMS) and a founding member of the Diversity in Math club, which aims to inspire people from all backgrounds to explore and develop their passion for mathematics.
Can you share a bit about yourself and what you are currently doing?
Hi, I’m Tiffany and I’m a first year student at McGill University! I study economics and statistics, which is not a sentence I would’ve expected a year ago. Other than that, in my free time I enjoy playing instruments, reading and I never say no to racket sports!
What inspired you to pursue your undergraduate education at McGill University in Canada?
This was actually a really difficult decision for me, and I know I definitely agonised over it, maybe a little too much. But I suppose that means that I can answer this question very completely! My inspiration was actually in my JC1 year, when I had the opportunity to go to a summer physics programme in Canada. I met so many different people from all over the world, and throwing myself into that new situation really opened my eyes to the world outside of our 725.7km2 island. I suppose in that moment I affirmed my desire to go overseas for my undergraduate education, and experience everything not-Singapore has to offer. Yes, I will probably be frustrated when things don’t work like they do in Singapore, but that’s part of the charm. I want to challenge myself by going out of my comfort zone and throwing myself into new situations, because I believe that that’s the best way to discover myself.
From there, I decided to apply to the US and Canada, and that’s when I discovered McGill. A few of my friends were going there and they seemed to be having a good time. McGill is pretty academically driven, which I value very highly because coming from Singapore, I didn’t want to settle for a less rigorous education. And I really do enjoy a work hard play hard culture, which I felt was reflective of others’ experiences at the school.
When it came to the final decision, I ultimately chose McGill because of a few factors. A big one is location: the school I got into in the states had 2000 students total, and was in a really rural college town. I don’t think I’m ready for that life. Another factor was immigration — Canada is much more flexible with letting undergraduates stay on and work there after graduating as compared to the US. And finally, when it came to cost, McGill was the same price as the other college in Singapore I was considering, so it basically went: “Same price to go on the other side of the world? Sold.” Also Montréal is just so pretty.
I see economics as a field where a variety of rich experiences should be absolutely crucial, especially as a topic dealing with the real world and the people living and interacting in it. I’m extremely thankful for the privilege I have to be able to have these opportunities to begin with, that broaden my mind and sharpen my skills.
Montreal sunrise.
What got you interested in Economics and Statistics for your undergraduate studies?
I love economics because it’s the study of decisions. Every time we do something, even small choices like practice the piano for an hour, there is an economic motivator. And economics is the study of the system which is the product of all of those small and big decisions that make up the world. How cool is that, right?
Beyond that, I believe that most of the pressing problems in the world are related to economics. Whether it’s developmental problems or problems related to climate action, a better understanding of the rules governing the system of “Us” contribute greatly towards solving these crucial problems. This is what ultimately tipped me over to doing economics, because I guess I’m impatient, and I want to see what I’m doing have a direct impact towards helping people.
As for statistics, I didn’t even know that I had an interest in it until university. At first, I went into my mathematics classes thinking I wanted to do the bare minimum of mathematics to prepare myself for economics graduate school and exit as quickly as possible. And then I took my first pure math class, and I finally understood what others meant when they said that math was pretty. It really goes to show that you can plan as much as you like, and then sometimes life takes you in unexpected directions. I find that that’s the greatest benefit of the Canadian university system. As long as I have enough credits to graduate, I can basically take whatever I want. This allows me to explore my interests and go beyond my junior college self’s perception of what I will be interested in. Which turned out to be terribly wrong. So that’s pretty awesome!
Were there any significant differences in the teaching style in Canada compared to Singapore? How did you adapt to the new environment there and cope with studying overseas on your own?
I would say that the differences in teaching style is mostly because of the transition from high school to university, not really differences between countries. The style I benefited from the most is definitely flexible curriculums, more than lecture and tutorial styles. It’s nice to not have to worry about pigeonholing myself into something I dislike too early. I swapped my second major quite a few times, from political science to finance and finally to statistics (whoops). And having the ability to not fully decide my program until basically whenever I like is great, because nothing is a better indication of whether you’ll like university-level [insert subject here] than actually taking some classes in that discipline and figuring it out.
The biggest difference I’ve actually noticed is not with the teaching environment, but the motivation of the students. Almost all of the students I’ve met here seem genuinely interested in some funky little thing or other, whether it’s striving to make the math department experience better for everyone, making awesome chrome extensions that make the bookmarking experience infinitely better, making the coolest coding projects (click to blow your mind), just to list some of them. That really inspires me and energises me to explore my interests, going above and beyond to make awesome things. And it’s a special kind of cool to work on a project with your friends and watch it slowly come together (or slowly crash and burn, rip our COVID-19 vaccine tracker, 2020-2021). In this process, I’ve learnt so many different skills and really redefined what I think I can or can’t do.
I flew over to Canada in January, during the very depths of the cold, cold winter. The first few days, I literally wore a beanie indoors despite the heater, because I was That Cold. I had to cook and clean the whole place, all by myself. It was definitely a huge learning curve (especially in the first few days when I ordered takeout with reckless abandon hahaha). But honestly, all the things I’ve had to learn I’m really grateful for, because there is no way I would’ve learnt to be this independent without these experiences. I learnt to cook in preparation of having to live abroad on my own, and that was probably the biggest glo-up in terms of skills I’ve ever had. I learnt to take care of my own space because no one else is gonna clean up after me lol. I learnt to tolerate the winter since I could only see most of my friends outdoors, socially distanced, in the biting cold. I’ve experienced lots of growth in these past few months, and now I’m both excited and prepared for the new experiences of in-person school!
Cool coding stuff!
Before and after picture of my cooking glo-up.
Has the current COVID-19 situation affected your university studies? How so?
As mentioned above, the COVID-19 situation made it impossible for me to go there for my first semester. My second semester was also online, since the Canadian government took high precautions to make sure that the spread of the virus is curbed. However, I don’t feel like my studies have been greatly impacted in a negative way. I am blessed with a pleasant home working environment, and I found a group of friends at McGill to both chat with and hang out with. Since Montréal was in a lockdown when I was in Singapore, we entertained ourselves with Minecraft, Among Us and other events like movie nights. I think taking the effort to throw myself out of my comfort zone and be social has definitely paid off in that sense. I most definitely would not have had such a good time if it was just me studying alone in my room at 3AM, and friend study sessions did wonders for both my productivity and happiness.
For the first semester, the only significant impact I had was that I decided for both socialising and sanity’s sake to sleep and wake up on Montréal time, which means that I slept at 12 noon and woke up at 8PM. This did make it difficult to hang out with friends in Singapore, and guaranteed that I’d have to sleep oddly to grab lunch or dinner with my friends. Overall I’m still young so I’m not too worried about it, but it was definitely odd to sleep with the sun shining into my room.
For the second semester, being in Montréal made my social life much more vibrant, but also being so close yet so far to campus made me really excited for things to finally get back to normal. Online school gets old after a while, and I deliberately chose to take a lighter course load this semester so I could both explore Montréal and to give me a respite from the challenges of having your room be where literally everything happens. I’m very thankful for my cool profs still making the subjects interesting, and my friends for being a wonderful break from all the darkness happening in the world.
My Minecraft cat, Weierstrass Approximation Theorem (yes, that’s their name).
What is your daily routine as a university student like?
I don’t really have a daily routine, it usually ends up being whatever is scheduled for the day. On work days, I wake up in the morning, and my brain takes quite a while to boot up. I’m resigned to the first 1.5 hours of the morning being completely unproductive, so I just cook and eat, and chat with friends. When I feel alert and ready, I start the studying sessions of the day. I really like the app Forest, and I break my studying into blocks of 1h / 1.5h / 2h sessions, with breaks in between. I attend some classes in real time, but not all of them. One of the wonders of being a university student is that you really can choose the study method that works best for you. Usually I have club meetings and office hours somewhere in between, so this also does afford a lot of flexibility. Sometimes I get derailed for a bit when someone pops on the discord server with cat streams, and of course I have to tune in to see the cat lounging around. But otherwise, I do work until I finish a decent amount of work, and then chat with my friends before bedtime.
On chill days, I like to just go out for the whole day with my friends, and do whatever picnic/walk/food adventure we planned. Work life balance, apparently :P. I’m really glad I decided to make my second semester chill, because I got to see so much of Montréal, and try so much awesome food! Now that I’ve seen Montréal, I hope that next semester I get to immerse myself into the university life more!
Cats of the Discord.
Within the 6 years you spent in NJC, were there any moments where you faced a significant setback? If so, how did you bounce back from them?
I’m lucky that my most significant setback in NJC was definitely early on in my schooling career. When I first entered NJ, I really had no interest in putting any effort towards my academics, and I was way more preoccupied with playing video games or reading books. I performed quite poorly in my first year, bad enough for my parents to worry about me being kicked out of the school actually.
I’m extremely grateful to have had people who believed in what I was capable of. Despite repeated bad grades, their faith in me was not shaken (I think, haha), and that really motivated me to live up to the expectations that they set for me. In JH3, I was determined to be as much of a “model student” as possible (yes, even doing my homework). Catching up on 2 years of lost content was definitely not easy, and I really have my teachers and my friends to thank for tolerating my ridiculous questions on basic content that I totally should have known by then. We would be doing some questions about acid base and I would still be confused on how to balance a chemical equation. Definitely an exercise in patience. If my friends are reading this, thanks for helping me not perish during maths class and answering my barrage of questions with grace.
What do you miss the most about NJC now that you’ve graduated?
Without a doubt, my friends and teachers. Of course I will try my best to keep up with their lives, but also after you graduate, it’s natural that your paths diverge and you drift apart. But each of them have given me lots of wisdom and enriched my schooling life, and I will definitely miss our shenanigans. They’re definitely the ones that made me excited to go to school everyday, and I would say that while learning can take place anywhere, anytime, they were the most valuable takeaways from my NJ experience.
Also plsss caifan??? Where else would you find a huge plate of rice, veg, meat and sauce for $2.30 ;-;;;;;. If I had caifan I would genuinely never cook because all the ingredients added up would be more expensive than just ordering caifan lol. APPRECIATE IT!!!!!! (shoutout to caifan auntie for always giving me extra veg and being able to recognise my order even when someone else was ordering it for me...)
Looking back, what advice would you give to your younger self back in NJC?
A really big question I had throughout my entire NJ life was figuring out what I wanted to do after. Throughout all the career planning sessions or experiences I had, I found that I didn’t really have a passion for some of the subjects I was learning, other than building a repository for fun facts. I spent ages with the ECG counsellor, trying to just plan my way through NJ and the future. But part of figuring out what you want to do is just having a lot of diverse and cool experiences, and sorting through what you feel about them. Planning only takes you so far — you definitely have to try to know. And if you have a bad experience with an activity, that’s part and parcel of finding yourself!
Another thing is just reflecting on the experiences that you’ve had. Doing a barrage of different activities is less important than cultivating a few activities you enjoy and reflecting on each and every one of them, learning from being involved and making mistakes. But if you just stumble along your path and leave everything you’ve done in the past behind you, without any sort of critical reflection, you don’t learn from your mistakes and improve.
Also, my JH1 personal mentor gave me really awesome advice: motivation is what you make of it. If you know what you want to do, it’s easy to see all the other subjects as useless and a waste of your time. But if you try hard enough, any subject can be linked in some way to something you want to do in the future, or are interested in. Especially in the midst of cramming and mugging for your subjects, it’s really crucial to focus on enjoying the material, and satisfying your “child-like” curiosity. This makes studying much, much, much less painful.