A Degree, a Full-Time Job, and Everything in Between

My journey through Applied Computing at the Singapore Institute of Technology.

My journey into computing didn't start at university.

I came from a Computer Engineering background at Singapore Polytechnic, where I built my foundations in programming, electronics, networking and understanding how technology works.

After polytechnic, I went on to serve National Service in the Singapore Armed Forces as a Combat Engineer. It was a different environment from engineering school, but one that taught me a great deal about discipline, teamwork and operating under pressure.

By the time I was thinking about university, I had already experienced both the technical and operational sides of problem-solving.

I also had something else to consider: my career.

I had started my professional journey at Singtel through an internship, and I wanted to continue progressing in the technology industry.

I didn't particularly want to treat my career and education as two separate chapters of life.

I wanted to do both.

That was what drew me towards the Singapore Institute of Technology's Competency-based Stackable Micro-credential (CSM) pathway in Applied Computing.

Rather than following a conventional university schedule, the programme allowed me to build my qualifications progressively while continuing to work.

It wasn't necessarily the easier option.

In some ways, I think it made things harder.

But it also meant that what I learned didn't have to remain confined to a classroom. I could take an idea from university, think about how it applied to my job, and return to class with questions shaped by actual industry experience.

That relationship between learning and working eventually became one of the most valuable parts of the journey.

Balancing university with a full-time job was probably one of the most demanding experiences I've taken on.

At work, I had responsibilities to fulfil, projects to move forward, stakeholders to manage and problems that didn't disappear just because I had an assignment due.

University had its own expectations: lectures, self-directed learning, assessments, project work and examinations.

Neither side stopped for the other.

There were periods when I had to move between technical problems at work and entirely different academic problems after hours.

Some days required more discipline than motivation.

And that's something I gradually came to understand.

You cannot rely on feeling motivated every single day, especially when you're managing several responsibilities at once.

Sometimes you have to show up, get the work done and keep moving.

I learned to be more deliberate with my time, to prioritise what mattered, and to recognise when something needed more attention rather than simply more hours.

I also had to accept that not everything would go according to plan.

There would be periods when work became demanding, when an academic concept took longer to understand than expected, or when I wasn't satisfied with the outcome of an assessment.

Over time, I became better at managing those situations rather than allowing them to derail everything else.

Looking back, I think the biggest change wasn't that I became better at handling a busy schedule.

I became more comfortable dealing with uncertainty.

I entered the programme with an engineering background and experience working in technology.

But being able to understand how a system works is not quite the same as understanding whether it solves the right problem.

This distinction became increasingly important to me as I progressed in product management.

Engineering teaches you how to construct solutions.

Product management forces you to consider the problem, the user, the economics, the constraints and the consequences of the choices you make.

University gave me another opportunity to connect these perspectives.

Subjects involving software engineering, data, cloud computing, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence challenged me to think beyond implementation.

Why is a particular approach appropriate?

What assumptions are being made?

How would the system behave when something goes wrong?

Can the solution scale?

And perhaps most importantly, is the solution actually useful?

I began to appreciate that there is rarely one perfect answer to a real-world problem.

There are trade-offs.

What matters is whether you understand those trade-offs well enough to make a sound decision.

One of the more interesting aspects of the CSM pathway was the people.

Unlike a traditional university cohort made up largely of students at a similar stage of life, I studied alongside working adults with different professional experiences, responsibilities and perspectives.

Some had considerable industry experience. Others were building new capabilities or changing directions in their careers.

That changed the way I approached discussions and group work.

Two people could look at the same problem and arrive at very different conclusions because of the environments they had worked in.

It reminded me that technical knowledge is only one part of being effective.

Communication, empathy, judgement and the ability to understand another person's perspective are equally important.

Sometimes the most useful thing you can do in a discussion is not to provide the answer.

It is to ask a better question.

One challenge that stood out to me was student life.

When most of your classmates are working professionals, university can become very transactional.

You attend a class, complete your assignments, sit for your exams and return to your everyday responsibilities.

There isn't always much time left to build relationships or experience university beyond the academic requirements.

As President of the Applied Computing Student Management Committee, I wanted to help change that.

To me, student life shouldn't disappear simply because students have full-time jobs.

We were still part of a university community, even if our schedules looked different from those of traditional full-time students.

Our committee worked towards creating opportunities for students to connect, participate and feel that they belonged to something beyond their individual modules.

That experience taught me lessons that couldn't be measured through examinations.

Leadership isn't just about holding a title.

It's about understanding what people need, working with others, making decisions and following through.

And sometimes, it means recognising that the best contribution you can make is creating the conditions for other people to participate and succeed.

Another lesson I took away from university was the importance of taking ownership of my own education.

It's easy to judge the quality of a learning experience entirely by the lecturer, the teaching material or the support available.

Those things absolutely matter.

But I don't think your progress should depend entirely on whether someone else explains everything perfectly.

At some point, you need to become comfortable identifying what you don't understand and figuring out how to close that gap.

That might mean reading documentation, experimenting with code, revisiting fundamentals or approaching the problem from a completely different angle.

I found this especially relevant in computing.

Technology changes too quickly for a degree to be the final destination of learning.

A university education should develop your ability to continue learning after the structured curriculum ends.

That was one of the biggest things I wanted to take away from the experience.

Not just a qualification.

The ability to tackle problems I hadn't encountered before.

My capstone project brought together several areas of computing that I had studied.

Rather than focusing on just one technical component, I worked on a system involving application development, data processing, automation, integration and security considerations.

The project became an exercise in understanding how different pieces of technology fit together.

Working on individual features was one challenge.

Making those features interact reliably as a coherent system was another.

I had to think about application architecture, data flows, system behaviour, deployment and the trade-offs behind different implementation decisions.

The process also reinforced something I've experienced in professional environments.

Building the technology is only part of the work.

You also need to communicate what you built, explain why you made particular decisions, and demonstrate that the solution addresses the original problem.

Not every aspect of the project turned out exactly as I had envisioned.

But it gave me an opportunity to reflect on my strengths, the gaps in my approach and what I would do differently in the future.

I value that experience because it was about more than producing a final submission.

It was about learning to bring complex technical ideas together.

One thing that made this period particularly meaningful was that my career was progressing at the same time.

While completing my studies, I continued working at Singtel and moved through different levels of responsibility in IoT product management.

The two experiences reinforced each other.

At university, I was learning technical concepts and exploring new disciplines.

At work, I was seeing how technology choices translated into products, business decisions, operational constraints and customer outcomes.

Sometimes something I encountered at work made an academic topic easier to understand.

Other times, a concept from university gave me a different way to approach a problem professionally.

That ability to move between theory and practice made the learning experience more relevant to me.

It also made me appreciate that professional growth doesn't have to wait until formal education is complete.

The two can happen together.

Completing the degree taught me a great deal about how I approach challenges.

I learned that consistency often matters more than intensity.

That being busy is not the same as making meaningful progress.

That leadership involves responsibility to other people, not just personal achievement.

And that understanding a subject means more than being able to reproduce an answer in an examination.

There were difficult periods, and there were outcomes I would have liked to improve.

But I don't think the value of the experience can be reduced to any single grade, certificate or achievement.

What matters more to me is whether I came away better equipped to solve problems, make decisions and contribute meaningfully.

In 2026, I completed my Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Applied Computing at the Singapore Institute of Technology.

It was the conclusion of roughly two and a half years of balancing academic commitments with a full-time career.

Receiving the degree was meaningful.

But it also felt like a milestone within a longer journey rather than a final destination.

The technical knowledge mattered.

The credential mattered.

What stayed with me most, though, was the perspective I gained from the people, responsibilities and challenges I encountered along the way.

I started this journey wanting to deepen my technical knowledge without putting my career on hold.

I finished it with a broader appreciation of engineering, business, leadership and the importance of continuous learning.

I still have plenty more to learn.

And that's exactly the point.

Let your work speak for itself. Everything else is secondary.