Things that You Will Miss After You Graduate (from SUTD)

You have worked hard for the past few years – reading, attending lectures, revision, mugging for exams, etc – and now the hard work has paid off. You are finally graduating from university and entering the workforce. You probably might not have given a lot of thoughts about it now as you are excited at the idea of relinquishing your student status; but once the dust has settled you would realise that there are things that you will definitely miss after you graduate. Here are the top 5 things that we think you will definitely miss the most:

1. #DSBJ Culture

This should be trademarked as SUTD’s signature. We believe in the “Sharing is Caring” philosophy so much that it gave birth to Don’t Say Bo Jio (#DSBJ) culture. We ‘jio’ everything from free food, free drinks, great discount deals, to free giveaways. Heck, we even throw in free hugs. You can find all these within the SUTD Family facebook group, which brings us to point (2).

2. SUTD Family Group 

This is probably one of the reasons why we still have facebook app on our mobiles. Apart from the awesome #DSBJ deals stated in (1), you can also unearth more treasures here. Shopping for fridge? You can find insane amount of pre-loved fridges for sale (at awesome prices, of course). Feel like going for a footie session? You can look for soccer-kakis here. There’re also job postings for those who are looking to earn some pocket money. The forgetful souls will be especially grateful for this page as helpful members post about things that were left behind (from water bottles, ICs, thumbdrives, wrist watch to mobile phone!)

3. 5^th Row (6^th Row, 7^th Row, 8^th Row…)

We have over 90 Fifth Row clubs here – from sports climbing, krav maga, DJ-ing to Korean language; you are bound to find a club (or two, or three, or four, or 90…) that suits your interest. Students might wish that they can attend all of these interesting clubs but till the day someone invent human-cloning machine, we strongly advise our students to just take what they can manage within their time. But once you graduated, most likely you have to sign up and pay a fee to be able to join similar activities.

4. Endless T-Shirt Collection

Nobody will say no to a free T-shirt. Some even will work for a T-shirt. Forget about those brands with certain ape in it, the one with the big curved tick, etc. At SUTD, we love our own SUTD brand shirts.  And we make sure that there are many chances for our students to earn that coveted T-shirt every now and then. Just tune in the SUTD Family often for the latest announcements 

5. Holiday Breaks 

You get around 2 months of breaks every year while you are studying, comfortably slotted in between semester breaks. You can go for exchange programmes (we have awesome exchange programmes with more than 10 universities here at SUTD!) , backpacking trip, pick up some new skills, explore new terrains… well you get the picture. But when you start working, you generally get between 14 to 16 annual leave days. And you have to plan your leave in advance to ensure that everything is well taken care of while you are away.

Bonus (6): Grumpy, SUTD resident cat.

This adorable feline has been with us since we were at our interim campus at Dover. She has been a regular feature at the campus that we can’t imagine not seeing her around.She is the unofficial ‘permanent’ resident of the campus hostel and living very well at the campus thanks to the ‘grumpy squad’ who have been taking good care of her by providing her food, drink, medical and lots of love. You can find her lounging around the steps of Block 57 hostel entrance most of the time.

You can tell that she has a special place in our hearts by the numerous photos and even art work of her on the web.

PS: You can find grumpy on Facebook too @sutdgrumpy!

Of course it is not all scary once you leave university. There are definitely perks of joining the working world. Not to worry, you will get to know about those perks sooner or later. Meanwhile take time to enjoy your last moments as a student in the campus and embrace the options out there when you are ready to do so.

Welcome to the real world, graduates!

UPDATE: Grumpy passed away on 19th September 2017, about a month after this article was published. She was estimated to have been 13 years old.