Appeal for Appeals

Thursday was yet another crazy day. Simply crazy.

The choir teachers, all three of us, scanned through the files for prospective choir appeal candidates, and came up with more than 30 names. We actually went to call each and every one of them to inform them of music auditions.

While flipping through the files, there were many, many appeal candidates who did not indicate how exactly they wanted to appeal to enter the school. Oh sure, there was a box where they filled out their CCA in their secondary school, but about 30-40% of them were from uniformed groups. I really pitied them, because nobody was going to give their application a single glance, let alone allow them in, for one very simple reason: what can they offer us? Uniformed group? So what?

Not that I have anything against them, despite uniformed groups being the one category of CCA I've never joined(I was in Christian Fellowship, ELDDS, dance, choir, squash, soccer, and chess at various points in my life). It's simply sad that nobody bothered to tell these students about the harsh reality of the appeal system. That they should not even bother to send in an appeal form to the school if all they can say is, "I was a scout leader".

You have to be in either a performing arts or sport to stand a chance. For sports, it's pretty obvious how people would be selected. For the performing arts, it's also quite straightforward, especially for the instrumental CCAs and dance. You have to be pretty good at an instrument, or have a decent dance background, to get in through appeal. Otherwise, forget it.

The single interesting exception, of course, is the choir. Of course, if the perception that choir guys are wussies isn't so strong, choir would just be another performing arts CCA where the appeal candidate has to have at least grade 4 in music, perfect pitch, and a range spanning 3 octaves to stand a chance. Wah, nice dream. Even Nelson Kwei's VJC doesn't demand that standard, though Nelson probably wish he could(who wouldn't?).

The choir is the only performing arts CCA accepting appeals that complete noobs stand a chance of succeeding in. Serviceable voice, can follow and carry a tune, good enough. And even so, only about 10 of the 30 odd people who turned up for auditions fulfilled those requirements.

Even those who were from supposedly reputable choirs didn't turn out to be as good as we hoped. Oh well...

So here's some advice for you secondary school students, if you're reading this. Please, please, if you think you need to appeal into a JC after your 'O' Levels, take up an instrument or a sport when you are in secondary school. If you really want to experience uniformed group life, do so, but for the 1st three months of JC, head for a 'useful' CCA.
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Been quiet on the BTech front these few weeks. Gotta start pushing games again!

Also been slacking off on my jogging. Must start piah-ing again!

The Wobbly Guy