Scorecard Gap Semester 2.0
Rafflesian Times
32
Gap Semester 2013: What’ s Up
Briefings for Gap Semester 2013 got underway at the end of last year, with students of the new batch ready to experience a remodelled and refreshed learning process. Things got underway with introductory briefings to the whole concept of a‘ Gap Semester’ and the registration for Self-Initiated Courses( SICs) in Term 3 last year.
The Year 3s we spoke to reported greatly welcomed the continuation of the self-initiated courses, which empowers keen and interested students to scout out attachment opportunities matching their specific interests. Judging from the overwhelming response, a large number of Rafflesians were enthusiastic about pursuing their interests in their own creative and meaningful ways.
Unsurprisingly, research programmes and attachment to mentors from the National University of Singapore rank dominate the SICs that have been initiated; coming in a close second are community-oriented SICs.
Such sentiment also stems from the fact that many younger students, after attending the Gap Semester Congress last year, learnt about the fun( and notso-fun) discoveries and experiences that their seniors had undergone in their journeys. From Bryan Chua’ s( 14A01A) self-initiated course on golf, to the sharing of the service-learning trip to Bhutan(‘ an eye-opener’), last year’ s Year 3s were adequately persuaded that no interest was too wild to pursue, or too time-demanding to aspire towards.
Furthermore, there were some changes made to the administrative process that sought to make the process of allocating Rafflesians to their Gap Semester courses more transparent. The most obvious change to the selection process was the introduction of interviews for all international and work attachment courses, instead of conducting a ballot for a majority of the courses on offer. This has made matters clearer and fairer, especially since most felt that the luck of the draw should not be the determining factor in choosing the most suitable candidates for a course.
However, it would seem that some courses are widely preferred than others. We found out, for instance, that‘ Fire. Batik. Paradise’, a course in which students would have visited two vastly different locations in West Java— Surabaya and Bali, was so undersubscribed it had to be cancelled. In comparison,‘ Sweden: 13-day Environmental Sustainability Programme’ was oversubscribed by a factor of four. This is inevitable, but it begs the question of whether Rafflesians are picking courses on the basis of interest, or if they are being unduly influenced by the location of particular courses, deeming some countries more interesting than others.
The Gap Semester is certainly a milestone in the evolution of the Raffles Programme. Prior to the Year 4 batch of 2012 going through the firstever Gap Semester, there has never been any such programme officially incorporated into academic curriculum across the country, let alone this institution. Many of the current Year 4 students are clearly looking forward to Gap Semester 2013— we hope that they have taken into account the feedback received from the previous batch and wish them a most enjoyable, enriching time!