Shifted to new campus and had some old staff tables left by colleagues from another school. And by chance my seat was changed at the last minute just before I unpacked (phew!) and I saw this name on the cabinet. "Mrs Lee Lee Mui". The name sounds all too familiar, and if there are 2 teachers I remember from my secondary school days, it is Ms Lim Lee Mui and Ms Goh Sok Hwa, my Physics and Chemistry teacher respectively.
Now by the time I entered the teaching service, to my disappointment Ms Goh had just retired the year before I came in. But I was never a Chemistry student, though I mugged really hard to earn my A back then. Physics was a different story altogether.
I digressed... anyway, thanks to the power of google and bloggers, I just did a search and found plenty of stuff on her, and MOE kindly posted a photo that can be searched in google image (luckily my image cannot be found using the same method.. lol)..
I was like "Oh my god! I'm using my Physics teacher's old cabinet!" and then "Oh my god! She got married!" to "Oh my god! She didn't changed at all in both appearance and the way she
I still remember her physics paper in the mid-year exams where her killer paper wiped out two thirds of the students (I survived but only scrapped through with a C5) and the principal had to address the concerned parents that if their kids score like 35-40 marks in Physics mean he/she did reasonably well. Back then we don't anyhow moderate examination marks, especially when there are geeks who scored well over 80 in that paper. It's heart warming to find from blogs that 10 years on, she is still doing the same.
But honestly speaking, those physics paper aren't difficult. It just really stretches your understanding in that subject matter. You see, physics ain't mathematics, where you can just practice and score A's, at least for maths up to 'A' levels. Physics ain't Biology and Chemistry, where there's truckloads of facts to remember and scoring well means to regurgitate those facts. Physics ain't humanities either, where you can justify your grounds by constructing an argument by yourself. Physics requires conceptual understanding and conceptual understanding comes with mathematical enlightenment and plenty of common sense (at least for up to 'A' levels again).
Asking factual questions is just so un-Physics, so I got to deal with plenty of thinking questions after two years of Physics under Ms Lim Lee Mui. And she was the inspiration behind my Physics degree and I even wrote an essay about her when I applied for scholarship. You know, those essay that ask you to write about something or someone who changed your life?
Anyway, even though I met you during one of the GE seminar that I attended, and met you a couple of times when I was an undergrad in NUS and that you most likely won't remember a student who graduated a decade ago. But I still remember that day when you cried in front of our class when we didn't do well in our tests, when we were not putting in our 100% effort, that you were heart-broken because of that. That we saw the softer side of you.
Ms Lim, thank you for being my Physics teacher. I hope some day I could let you know that I became a Physics teacher because you inspired me to be one. Thank you!
singapore physics teacher essay
Posts
