What to study?

My time here has exposed me to so many different fields of knowledge that I am increasingly confused about what I want to major in. On one hand I like economics a lot, on the other hand engineering attracts me because it gives me skills to create things. Anthropology and Sociology fascinate me, while creative writing is something I’d like to learn.

Singapore’s academic system has one weakness, and that is that we become specialized way too soon. Junior college limits us to roughly 4 subjects; most people use it to concentrate on either the arts, sciences, or social sciences.  This creates a tendency to “pigeon hole” ourselves in a particular domain of knowledge, and mostly, interact with people interested in the same interests. I recall being mildly shocked when I heard a group of people discussing the beauty of math in my dormitory, in my first days here- I had been used to others in my arts stream hating math.

People also choose their majors before they enter university. What I have found most educational about my stay here is choosing what courses to take from an incredibly thick bulletin. Creating your own path gives you flexibility; it also forces you to see all other domains of knowledge. From this process you realise what you do not know; and you distill for yourself a path of knowledge in the seas of the unknown. The current British-based system of choosing one’s major before studying leads people to blindly follow a path, comfortably rolling towards an intense specialization in one subject, in blatant ignorance of all other roads of knowledge.