Recap 2025
- Howie Chia
- 5 hours ago
- 4 min read
As 2025 draws to a close, I took a moment to reflect on a year packed with growth at Singapore Polytechnic. This post recaps my key wins and lessons, from academics and CCAs to hands-on projects that pushed my limits.
Academic Achievements
When I started at SP, I aimed to keep a solid GPA while staying busy with CCAs, volunteering, and side projects. Heading into my 5th semester, I've achieved a GPA of 3.80. There’s definitely still room for improvement, but I'm proud of balancing it all.
Back in 2022, learning about Critical Core Skills shifted my focus to real skills over just memorising stuff. That paid off with the Edusave Skills Award for the top 5% in my cohort, based on 10 LifeSkills and good conduct. The big one was getting nominated to apply for the PSC Scholarship (Sustainability). I have since passed SP's internal review, did the psychometric assessment, submitted my portfolio, and am now waiting on next steps. Just being nominated already means a lot to me. Then in early December, I finally made into SP EDGE, the top 1% group. I don’t have exceptional talent but I make up for it through stubbornness and hard work. So, for all you other “Rock Lee(s)” out there, this win is for all of us!
CCA Highlights
As a SPOT student, I had many opportunities. One of which was being the Outreach Lead for the Youth Model ASEAN Conference (YMAC) 2025, held at Universitas Pelita Harapan, Jakarta. There I led a transnational team of 10 students from Indonesia and Singapore, managing the social media and graphic aspects of the event, reaching over 200 delegates. The event turned out well and I was invited back to share my experience to my SP juniors.
One of the highlights in joining YouthCorps was serving in the Eldercare Cluster as an Instructor at 早上好! 1.0, where I taught students how to speak conversational mandarin. Other meaningful activities include volunteering to help underprivileged students and seniors. These activities remind me to appreciate what I already have and grateful to be in a position where I can help others.
Back in 2022, when I attended SP Open house (SPOH) with my dad, I saw a great presentation by an SP senior student. I still don’t know who that was, but his confidence and demeanour left a deep impression. Ever since then I set a personal goal of improving my public speaking skills. From class project presentations to hosting events, I would jump on every chance to do presentations. How fitting that the last event I am doing for my Emcee CCA is SPOH 2026. Feels like I have come full circle.
Applied Learning
My decision to choose poly over JC was mainly applied learning. The opportunity to pick up new skills and apply them in different contexts appealed to me. Tracing back my transdisciplinary learning journey at SP, I picked up many new skills. But what’s interesting is how one thing leads to the next. For example, through SP’s Tinkerlab, I learnt how to use Adobe Dimension and Adobe Aero to create Augmented Reality models that can be used to help raise awareness for recycling. Together with the skills I obtained after leading a transdisciplinary team for YMAC 2025, I found myself leading a new project “Beyond the Flush!” under the NEA YES Leaders programme. I would leverage these new skills as well as the advice from my school and industry mentors, and the expertise of my team mates to successfully complete the project that was eventually showcased at Funan IT Mall in June 2025.
At the same time, all the soft skills (managing projects, communicating with team mates, etc.) and hard skills (data analytics, UI/UX design, video-editing, AI-powered editing tools, etc.) accumulated in the past 2.5 years were put into practice at my internship with the UAE-Singapore Business Council. To top it all off, I got invited back to share about my internship experience with DMC juniors. After all the opportunities SP has given me, it was the least I could do. I hope by sharing how I navigated through an internship while juggling the NEA Yes Leaders project, I can inspire my juniors and pay it forward.
What’s next?
To wrap up, 2025 has been good for me. I am a little sad that my SP journey is slowly coming to an end. But at the same time excited for what lies ahead… National Service, then University, then what? The world is changing rapidly and we must keep pace with the changes to stay relevant. Do I know exactly where I am heading? No… but with the can-do attitude and learning strategies I picked up from SST and SP, I believe things will work out. If I can do it, so can you! Wishing all my mentors, friends and family a happy, healthy, productive and meaningful 2026!
Chia Howie
28 December 2025
TLDR
Recap 2025: GPA 3.8, Edusave Skills, SP Edge, YMAC, Youthcorp, NEA YesLeaders, Funan-showcase, Internship at UAESBC. Hard work + applied skills = real progress; excited for NS and beyond.
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