picture in my mind

Had my interview today. Shall try to describe it in detail.

It was conducted in this weird glassy-doored room in VJ. And when I got there, I had to wait for a bit outside. And the wait made me fidgety, and I kept running through the possible questions in my head. (By the way, I was wearing a grey blouse and long black pants.)

Finally, when she came up to invite me in, I remember being first, relieved. Because she was smiling, and really, really nice - you can tell straight away. And she was very natural and casual about everything. She was a pretty old lady, I say at least mid-fifties, but she had nice wrinkles. Brown hair and very tall. Her name was Dr Susan Stobbs, she's a physicist from the college I applied to: Pembroke. I want to smack myself thinking about how I behaved. I think I smiled too much to cover up my nervousness, and when I started to talk my mouth went a bit dry.

The first question she asked, was naturally, 'Why'd you pick Pembroke?' And I just said something about gut-feeling, it's a small college, beautiful... blah blah. I tell you, all the sensible answers just flew from my head. This always seems to happen to me. When I actually have to prove myself on something, I don't. I forgot the fact that I like Pembroke because it seems to encourage diversity. That would have been an okay answer.

Then she asked me what I like about Biology and Psychology. The psychology answer was just bleeagh again. I kept saying about understanding people and helping them and couldn't elaborate. Then after this expected initial introduction part she started asking about personality and genetics (Can't quite remember the exact phrasing of her question.) and I said about how research has shown a lot of one's personality, and intelligence as well, is genetic while of course upbringing does play a part. And I didn't back it up with any information that I've read! I could have mentioned the Child of Our Time documentary, or Manu's book that she's lent me about the Genome, or any of the twin research findings that we've always heard about. Gah. So frustrating. My answers were just so unsatisfying.

Then she began the really weird science-y questions. She asked me about sound waves. And why we have two eyes or ears. I was quite stumped, and gave very simplistic answers which were not what she was looking for. Then she drew on a piece of white paper a diagram of sound waves and tried to guide me to the answer. For instance, she'd ask me how sound waves travel, then I'd say: propagated by air molecules. And she'd go, "Yes. That's right." encouragingly, thereby making me feel less stupid. (But really, when I look back in retrospect.. sigh. pathetic I am.) Apparently, with two ears, we have two channels through which sound waves can travel and that creates interference within our brain, making it loud, I guess. How am I supposed to know that?! You'd have to hint me a million times for me to get that.

After that, shockingly, she asked me to differentiate and integrate! And an alarm bell just went off in my head, you know. My math isn't fantastic. She gave me two equations, both with trigo in them. Thank god I could do them both. And thank god Salman asked me to help him with integration just this past weekend - it refreshed my memory.

Oh, after this one, was the disastrous physics hot air balloon question. It's supposed to be easy, but I just couldn't think straight. And she asked me about archimedes' principle, which thank the Lord, I could remember by heart. And she asked the volume of air that needs to be contained within the balloon to buoy the whole structure up. I was just so unbearably slow to arrive at the answer, and she had to do it for me! Tell me, are we supposed to know that one cubic metre of air is 1 kg? Because I couldn't remember that, and she had to guide me in a roundabout way, involving chemistry and molar volume.

I don't know if the purpose of asking these questions are to see how good we are with our concepts, or the purpose is to see our thought processes. Either way, I don't think I impressed her very much.

After that, she asked about my hobbies. I said reading and video-editing. I wanted to elaborate on my reading but then I didn't think she was interested in my obsession over Philippa Gregory's books or Lymond. She jokingly said I could make a documentary of cambridge then. Haha. I can't remember if I said: "If I get there." Don't think I did. Must have been that cynical voice in my head. But I just laughed a bit. She asked me about my neuroscience attachment too and I talked about that pretty okay. And wondered if I wanted to be a medic (cause I talked about the surgeons). But I said something along the lines of not being very steady with my hands and lacking the ability to make quick on-the-spot decisions. I stuttered a bit.

And she asked me if I'd taken the SAT. And I told her I took another one recently and I got the results yesterday. And told her: 770 for Critical Reading, 760 for Math and 700 for Writing. At the writing part she commented: 'That's very good.' Which made me go YAY a bit. Because even if I don't apply to US, and I told her I don't think I will, my SAT results have been of some use to boost my image.

When she asked me if I had any questions about Natural Sciences or Cambridge in general, the first thing that went through my mind was, 'Huh. It's gonna be over already? So fast? Or does she think I'm so boring she wants to be rid of me as soon as possible?' Anyway, I asked her what she liked best about her students. Apparently they're all very bright and enthusiastic. Oh dear, how do I keep up.

Time flew by fast. She informed me that the result of my application will be out in January and ended off with a 'Nice to meet you.' I almost stumbled over my bag in the process of getting up and thanked her profusely.

Overall, it could have been LOADS better. But nevermind if I don't get in, although I'm holding out for that little bit of chance. I still have that MA degree course in Edinburgh University to feel extremely hopeful about. And if even that doesn't materialise, I still have NUS. Which can still be fun, I'm sure.

Will start to intensively research NUS degree courses after As.