21.12.10

The Mayans predicted that the world would end on 21st December. NUS students couldn't agree more. 21st December was the date which NUS was scheduled to release the Semester 1 AY2010/2011 results. Those who had subscribed to an SMS service would receive an SMS that told them their grades as well as their CAP for that semester. Those who didn't had to wait till later in the afternoon to check the NUS website.

Here at FASS, being the faculty that cares, we tried to appeal to Administration to include a 'Merry Christmas' in the SMS, but it was turned down. In the end, they stuck to their format of 'A/U xx123 , grades, CAP: xx'

By 7AM, all systems were ready. The super phone that would send out SMSes to all NUS students was being charged and warmed up.

Super NUS phone that can transform into a killer robot as well.

Our Welfare Advisor Mr Wee Kare was busy phoning Counselling and Psychological Services, making sure everything was in place. Last semester their phone lines crashed because they didn't anticipate the large volume of suicidal/depressed students that would call in.

And the SMSes went out. One by one, all across Singapore, NUS students are rudely awaken by the best (or the worst?) alarm clock this year, the pushSMS delivering the results

Talk about an explosive wake-up call!

Twitter began flooding with whines and complains and joyous celebrations and moans and one-liners and grumbles. Our Twitter team had unleashed a viral hashtag that was retweeted countlessly to try to keep everyone's mood up. Some of our favourites:

" #howwehandlebadresults History students think back and wonder what went wrong in the past

#howwehandlebadresults Philosophy students ask if they didn't get good results, are they 'bad results'? And what is the real meaning of 'bad'?

#howwehandlebadresults Sociology students are in a continual struggle with those with high CAPs but can never resolve it. #conflicttheory (you need to actually take soci to understand this one) "

In the office, we found out that only about 60% of students subscribed to the SMS service. This baffled us. Why would anyone want to know your results a couple of hours later than you can? Doesn't it just prolong your agony? 

Mr X's bell curve

Mr X, a very devious professor (who DID use this bellcurve which our Twitter team drew for his module)  said: "Why are these fools waiting till the afternoon to get their results? Let's prolong their agony by shutting down our servers and pretend it's some technical glitch!"

And because he was a senior member of the staff, everyone listened to him and ISIS did go down for a period of time. We forget what it stands for... It Sucks It Sucks? -shrugs-. That must have been what NUS students were lamenting anyway, when they couldn't access their results.

The servers did go up eventually, and everyone did get their results. Counselling Services report another jam in their phonelines, with countless people calling in. One caller wanted to 'burn up all her textbooks and jump into the fire'. Another threatened to 'hold their breath till he burst'. There was even someone who said she would 'jump onto Bus A1 from the rear and let it drag her around campus!'

Head Dean caught whiff of this and called US up, at realFASS. 

"This is unacceptable, the morale is far too low. You guys need to churn out some high quality tweets to keep their mood up!"

We said: "But we only have 50+ followers! There are so many students out there, what difference will we make?"

Head Dean: "Sigh... I can see why they hired you for this Twitter job and not in the CNM department. It's the power of mass media! You make good tweets, people will retweet them, and your popularity will spread! "

Psst, have you heard of @realFASS?

So we worked hard and long to churn out tweet after tweet. Our numbers steadily climbed (clumb? clamb? nah, climbed seems right) and sits at a modest 100 now. Our Twitter head was quite contented, given we only created the account a week ago.. 100 followers in 1 week seems pretty decent!
However, one of the members in our creative team suddenly perked up:

'100 isn't good enough! We are still behind some other fake twitter accounts that have been inactive for a month, and even then, their tweets are not as funny as ours!'

"Now now, don't be too pompous, it's up to people to think what is funny and what is not. Give it time! If we keep producing good quality tweets, people WILL follow eventually."

'-grumbles grumbles-. I think we need to ask them to actually recommend us to their friends! Following our account directly supports us as it helps us hit our monthly quota! Big Boss said he will fire us if we don't hit the quota!! I can't lose this job! I can't go back to tweeting under @coolboiz8181 !!'

"Calm down, young one. We shan't be so pushy and demanding, we want people to be attracted to us, not us going out to grab them. This is also why you are still single, you are too desperate. Just be yourself, be nice, and what's yours will come to you"

'Yes relationshipguru boss. -_-' -sulks.

~~~


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love, 
realFASS team