In light of the new academic year ahead that brings the promise and hope of freshies, I present you the essential guide to Tembusu jargon. Hopefully, this may help to relieve some of the confusion that many freshies will understandably face, especially in this crazy world of acronyms. In this post, I will bring you down the main chain of command so you'll know who's who and who not to piss off.
Rector
The rector at Tembusu College is Prof. Tommy Koh, who, if you already didn't know, is worth a google right NOW. He is an amazing man with more titles and accomplishments under his belt than he has waist to carry. Rumor has it he lives on Mount Olympus. Prof. Koh occasionally graces the college to bless it with wisdom and visits from his friends from high places through hosting Tembusu Forums.
Master
A sober and soft spoken-man, (Assoc.) Prof. Gregory Clancey is the Master at Tembusu, which in political terms equals that position of a monarch. He is a benevolent king, of course, who by night doubles as Chuck Norris or the Last Samuri. As threatening as that sounds, Prof. Clancey is actually really, really friendly and makes sure Tembusu is generally well looked-after.
Fellow
That's just pretentiously unpretentious name for membership in club academia. So any "Fellow" at Tembusu is essentially a "member" of Tembusu. Here, you'll likely come across a few types of Fellows. The subcategories are as follows:
Residential Fellow (RF)
A professor or lecturer who lives in Tembusu College. See, it's doesn't sounds so fancy this way anymore, does it?
Visiting Fellow
A professor or lecturer who is... visiting. Meaning they only live and teach at Tembusu for a number of semesters. They ensure there's always a fresh mix of colour and spice in Tembusu's curriculum and learning landscape.
Graduate Fellow (GF)
These are graduate students (doing Masters or PhDs) who pretend to be undergraduates. I suppose they form a sort of bridge between the non-graduate Fellows and help out around the college to earn brownie points or something.
The Office
It's a vague and ambiguous term, especially considering there are two offices. The Office of Housing Services (OHS) are the monsters in our basement (okay, they are actually nice people) who deal with the rooming and facilities. The other office doesn't seem to have a proper name, but that's where Tembusu's main administration magic happens, and where the Master and most of his Fellow's offices are. Also, it quite suspiciously happens that the staff in that office are all good-looking.
Resident Assistant (RA)
Just as the Wicked Witch of the East had flying monkeys, so does the Tembusu Administration Office have its minions, named RAs (and GFs too, apparently). They are regular students who seem very important but don't actually do much until you lose your card-key at some odd hour in the night. If you fancy any RA (or GFs), their numbers are plastered at Tembusu's entrances so that you can ring them up at night for a chat.
The College Student Committee (CSC)
Not much explanation needed here. Most of your are familiar with the counsel culture in your JCs. These are the kids who are constantly planning some massive, explosive, action-packed event to validate our sad existence as students.
House Committee (House-com)
Good gracious, as if we didn't have enough committees! The eighteen levels of residence at Tembusu are divided into five houses, each of which have their own student leaders who organise house gatherings to create some semblance of unity and camaraderie, usually under the pretext of supper.
Wing-leader
The people go knock on your door to invite you to house suppers. There are two on every floor.
*
So there we have it! These are the slightly more important (or useful) people to get to know around the college. If you'd like to put names to some of these positions, you can check out their faces at Tembusu's webpage.
That's all I have for tonight, folks. Good night!
No comments:
Post a Comment