Perception

The new year began with the familiar feeling the previous one did, that of worry and anxiety involving selecting modules for the upcoming school term. Despite trying to plan for the semester beforehand, complications always arise during CORS bidding with exam date clashes and what not. Besides the study break and examination period, these two weeks are arguably the most stressful time for any semester, and the depressing thing is I still have minimally another four semesters to go.

Anyhow, 2009 ended a few days ago, and considering that I’m trying to be more of a goal-oriented person, I’ll revisit the goals I set myself a year ago and see where I’ve come up short.

I missed what was probably my main objective of the year then, which was to pick up Python, but fortunately I’ve been able to use PHP, MySQL and CodeIgniter to build a couple of sites for myself. I guess I just didn’t have the drive to learn a new programming language last year, and was instead more focused on the application of my current knowledge. I did manage to do more reading than in 2008, finishing a few of John Grisham’s works, and right now I’m in the middle of Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston and The Art of Community by Jono Bacon. I’m hoping to borrow or purchase a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, and with any luck finish it by the middle of the year.

With regards to my fitness, I’ve moderately improved (or at least that’s how I feel about it), managing to secure an Incentive for my IPPT. Hardly impressive, of course, but sufficient to get by the rest of the year without further response from MINDEF. My grades, on the other hand, went on a roller coaster ride of sorts, soaring in the middle of the year before bottoming out at the end of it. That was quite discouraging naturally, and the decline of my CAP means I missed the mark with respects to my last goal.

My goals for 2010 would include a continuation of those I set for myself in 2009, but maybe this time around I’ll be able to successfully accomplish all of them.

Scale sgBEAT to greater heights
sgBEAT was definitely something I didn’t see coming at the start of last year, but yet now it’s easily my greatest priority. The service has enjoyed quite a fair bit of growth over the last few months, and I think there’s definitely potential for more. 2010 is going to be an exciting year for sgBEAT, and some things I hope that we’ll be able to see through this year is more growth, possible collaborations with businesses and ideally, a revenue stream.

Improve on my grades
Enough said.

Learn Python
I really need to find time to get down to this after a year of procrastination. Although Ruby on Rails has been getting popular, I think I’ll go ahead with Python on Django first. With regards to web design, there’s still HTML5 and CSS3 which I’ve yet to sufficiently explore, and even YUI as well.

Fulfill IDA’s ELITe programme
Both my mentorship and internship are slated to be this year, and doing well in this programme is something I’d like to achieve.

These four goals are probably more than enough to keep me busy and focused for the rest of the year, although I think for next year I’ll try to set more quantifiable ones. I’m really looking forward to what this year has in store for me outside of academia; school, on the other hand, is something that I can’t wait to be over.