Science, Arts and Sports in Common Letitia Lew

It's generally taken to be a sign of desperation when a girl in the science stream sacrifices precious studying time to read books just so she can discuss the themes with Humanities students, but that is precisely what I did. Not only did I read their set texts like Antony and Cleopatra and frequently intrude on my best friends' class lunches, I was also the only student on the Literature trip to the UK who was not concentrating in the subject. Despite being the "science stowaway," I enjoyed the performances of Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing, the lectures at Oxford and York universities on Othello and Dante's Inferno, and the history lessons at the Roman baths as much as anyone.

I love both the arts and the sciences dearly, but the A-level system has forced me to specialize. In Raffles Junior College I studied Chemistry, Economics, Mathematics and Physics, and it was fun to discuss the possibilities of black holes and laugh about puns on chemical equilibrium with my classmates, but many scientifically-inclined students did not share my passion for the arts. I began yearning for the halcyon days of secondary school, where everyone shared the same comprehensive common curriculum, and where...