Bukit Timah: George

George is a Lecturer and a researcher as well as a grassroots leader. As an instructor and educator, he comes into contact with many students and one of the things he found was that students today are unlike students in the past. One of the things that he realised about university students especially is this very heightened level of stress that they feel. There’s a very strong difference in how he thinks the university students are thinking about themselves and the kinds of issues they are coping with.

As educators, it’s hard to ignore the fact that these things exist. He’s come across multiple instances where students say things like ‘I can’t complete my essay; can I have more time?’. Typically, the instructors would say no in a university setting because of the rules around all these things. He did, however, notice an increasing amount of such requests, and the people making these requests were those doing very well. So instead of trying to say no, he tried to find out why they need more time rather than assuming that they have poor time management or some other stereotypical way of doing things. Then after having some of these conversations with these students, he realised a lot of the things that go on with their lives and how there’s a lot of pressure to perform well while juggling all the things that they have.

So that really got him thinking about how he can help students better, and how to help them navigate some of these difficult questions they have. He started thinking about how he can help students better, and how to help them navigate some of these difficult questions they have. He thinks educators should work with the universities to see how they can be allies instead of just stakeholders.