Many believed that today is going to be unlucky day. Sad thing is, Project Work results chose to come out on this day...

Like last year, our school did badly. When our Deputy Principal, Ms Chia, announced to the cohort, who had earlier heard rumours that everybody did badly, that there are 100% passes, half of the students in the cultural centre cheered. When she announced that 75% of the cohort got an A, B or a C, the cheers got louder. Pretty nice number huh? That was obviously wat the students were thinking at that moment. Here comes the truth: Out of a cohort of around 900 students, 0.5% got an 'A', 4.5% got a 'B', and 70% got a 'C'.

Speechless. Many of us couldnt believe it. After last year's results, the teachers told us that they are teaching us in such a way that we would not repeat our senior's mistakes. We were told of wat mistakes our seniors made. We did numerous drafts, got commented by the tutors, errors pointed out, and we did the best we could possibly do. But why do we still end up getting almost the same grade as our seniors, if not worse?

Fine. If anybody who knows me read this, they would say I should not complain. For a very good reason that I was one of the 4.5% of students who got a 'B'. I am not saying I am not satisfied, in a field of students who scored 'C's I consider myself to be very lucky. But looking one step further, all the other JCs in Singapore did well. In Hwa Chong Institution, 84% of the students scored 'A'. In Raffles JC, over 90% did. Even in lower-ranked JCs, such as Meridian JC, 50% scored an 'A', in Tampines JC, majority scored 'B'. And St Andrew's JC? Stuck at the bottom of the list.

The fact that Project Work is actually internally graded, i.e. all your reports and works are marked by the tutors of your own school, is probably one of the reason why some schools did better than others. There is a certain degree of bias towards students from your own school. Tutors try not to penalise the students too much or unnecessarily. But not in SAJC, where tutors are strict and in particular, a Mrs KYL actually moderated the grades of a class down by three points for every report she saw for reasons which only she can fathom. We look at the comments given by the markers, mostly positive remarks, two or three negative remarks and the result is a big fat 'C'. We look at our comments, we are really clueless on how we actually got such grades when comments are okay.

I was actually rather surprised that I was the only one in my room who scored a 'B', everybody else score a 'C'...even Mun Hon, whose presentation skills and writing skills are freaking good. Surprise eh. Perhaps that is why my roommates start complaining about the results...they blamed it on everybody but themselves. Eventually one of them started complaining about the standard of SAJC, calling it a lousy one and that they have all been cheated to study here, and that he will be better off if he was back in I***a...I mean, that is besides the point, isnt it? You made your decision to study here, although u may say u did not know the situation in Singapore is like tat. Fair enough. The thing is, arent you getting a bit biased there? You are assessing a school based on its Project Work results alone? If the sole reason why you do not like being here is because it ranks low in your own rankings, think again, why are you sent here in the first place, and not in the top colleges? Why? I thought it was obvious that the reason lies within yourself.

Who knows, in no time, there might be an online petition again, with students signing it, pledging for their work to be re-graded.