Volume 1 (2017): Making Sense of Life
“This extraordinary volume provides unexpectedly heartwarming and heartbreaking insights into the interior lives and thoughts of SMU business graduates. It is both a paean to and an indictment of Singapore’s education system and its excessively powerful formative impact on individual lives, family relationships, and Singapore society as a whole. The youthful contributors overwhelmingly accept life aspirations imposed by the expectations of family, society and self, which they themselves recognise are uniform and limiting. Their intensely personal reflections, unleavened by humour, lay bare the contradictory liberating and homogenising effects of an undergraduate business education (not peculiar to SMU or Singapore only), while refreshingly engaging the too-often-taboo topics of race, religion, sexual orientation and social class.”
Linda Lim
Professor (Strategy) Stephen M Ross School of Business,
University of Michigan
Volume 2 (2018): Still Making Sense of Life
“To read the essays in this volume is akin to reading someone’s private journal. We get a telling glimpse into the hearts and minds of graduating SMU students who reveal their frank take on school, family, friends and relationships. Many offer useful advice on how to succeed and live a fuller life, advice that will surprise their parents, juniors and students thinking of applying to SMU, a different U.”
Leong Thin Yin
Professor,
Singapore University of Social Sciences
“This book is a reflective, provocative, and honest peek into the dreams and aspirations, disappointments and challenges faced by a generation who has come of age with social media and less encumbered about expressing their feelings. Given free rein to express in manners they feel most comfortable in long form, be it in poems, anecdotes, or in reflections, they unleash their deepest thoughts on how they make sense of their place in this world. A revelation and truly refreshing. For anyone who wants to glimpse into the hearts and minds of Millennials—their common experience in SMU notwithstanding—and the issues they face, this is a must-read. Their perspectives are no holds barred and authentic”.
Dr Augustine Pang
Professor of Corporate Communication (Practice)
Lee Kong Chian School of Business,
Singapore Management University
Volume 3 (2022): Making Sense of Life (Finally?)
“Having read countless student papers over more than four decades, I admire how Eng Fong has inspired his students to pen such thoughtful and intimate essays, some good enough to be in the New Yorker. A frequent visitor to Singapore for six decades, I have never previously encountered such deep and candid insights into its youth and society.”
L.A. Peter Gosling
Professor Emeritus of Southeast Asian Studies,
University of Michigan
“If you want to understand young people living in this VUCA world, read this book of 60+ essays by SMU. The essays reflect the life of modern youth in Singapore and offer a deeper understanding of their inner world.”
Carol Ma
Associate Professor & Head of Gerontology Programmes,
Singapore University of Social Sciences
