Going back to Jurong

Yesterday, we, the ex-Jurong gifters (Natasha, Gregory, Amirin and me), together with Aini, went back to Jurong sec for a recruitment drive. 

So… I met Greg at Jurong Point at supposedly 9 but was late (as usual) so we ended up meeting only at 9:15. We managed to catch 246 and went to Taman Jurong CC to meet the rest and discuss what we were going to say at Jurong. 

At first we didn’t know what to expect or what to do, like we didn’t even know how it was going to be conducted so we assumed it was like "ok we’re going to be in the canteen and we’re just going to interact with people and see if they were interested". 

We then listed down possible questions they might ask and how we’re going to explain what we do to them and all. It was actually quite a challenge to come up with the possible questions as we had to put ourselves in the shoes of who we were going to talk to, as in people who have never stepped into gift before. 

In the midst of answering the possible questions, it made me remember like why I wanted to join gift in the first place and why I’m still here. I think I wasn’t the only one who felt that, like all of us remembered how we started off in gift and ended up who we are today in gift. It was a pretty amazing experience!

When we reached Jurong, the principal then told us she wanted us to cater only to the library students because they didn’t have a lot of programmes and wanted them to join us as one of the programmes (Something along the lines of that I think). She also told us to make ourselves at home, joking with us to get lunch just in case we faint during the talk. 

Sitting in the canteen eating the food we ate for the past 4 years of our lives brought back really fond memories making us wish we were students again. It felt awesome to see our teachers and juniors after so long. 

After lunch, we went up to the library to look for Mdm Yu, as told by the principal. We were like kind of disappointed at first, like we were expecting a bigger audience but we only got 7. Despite such small numbers, we made the best out of it. We went to talk to them like how we planned to, and the people were super super super quiet like omg I didn’t even hear them talk until the last part when  Mdm Yu made them ask us at least one question each. 

We told them how we each started off in gift, how we coped with it with our school life in Jurong, coming from various CCAs and all. It definitely brought back many awesome memories for me. 

(Lijah, Nuovo and Szeying joined us too)

As we were sharing our personal experiences with them, although they don’t talk much, but we could see them going like wow, and that some of them were pretty interested to join us. Oh oh! And we also came up with an impromptu demonstration of a big book dramatization and Aini did us the honour of reading us a small book. 

We really hope to see them in sessions in the future. 

To summarize, it was altogether a really good day, definitely worth waking up at 7 in the morning for!

-Sheryl-