I applied to Cambridge on a dare. Serious!

I was never the most organised person in life. Applying to Cambridge University and getting in for Law was a decision spurred on by a wrong decision. I finished my A Level at MCKL and received my results in January 2018. It was then that I was convinced pursuing accounting to try it out. During this time, I realised I enjoyed some elements of the course, which was the investigative elements. It led me to consider what the different ways the auditing standards applied were. I enjoyed the ambiguity of the words and whether different ways of interpreting them would produce different results. You may be able to guess where I am going with this, I realised over time that my intellectual appetite could be better stated by Law. 

So in about October 2018 I decided to take a risk, just apply for Cambridge University. I remember visiting Mr Joshua Johnson from MCKL Careers, University Placement and Alumni Relations Department (CUPAD) to talk about this. I told him that I would take a risk in the most literal sense. I would apply to get into Cambridge and if I do not get it, I would stay an accounting student. Thus, my UCAS application form only had one choice on it, Cambridge! Not kidding. 

This is not a story that is normative, in that it is not one that you should follow. But I write this intending that it be illustrative of a broader proposition that we do not end up exactly where we plan to in life. If you can bear with me while I speak on a hypothetical armchair, going through life is like sailing a ship through water, you can aim the ship in a general direction, but the fickle waves will push you off course! For me, literally off an academic course into another one!

Puns aside, getting into Cambridge felt then like everything was falling into place. Life immediately after Cambridge in contrast did not (but I will get to that later). To focus on the admissions process, the Cambridge interview with Dr Martin Steinfeld, who interviewed me and a few other MCKL-ians in Cambridge, was the first time I enjoyed an academical verbal spar! It was intellectually gritty, in that I had to hold my own against his questioning, a rather thorough questioning at that. However, this questioning was created to test the internal consistency of my logical reasoning. This I soon realised is key to a lawyer’s craft as we would be ‘pushed all the way back’ to our foundational principles in reasoning. For this reason, I thank the MCKL lecturers and student community for always challenging me. I thank a few friends for never letting me have a quiet lunch, by that I mean always challenging my beliefs for positive academic discussion, you know who you are. 

The three years of undergraduate Law in Cambridge were full of ups and downs. One major down was that 1.5 years of my degree experience was ‘tainted’ by the pandemic – I think the lamentations and lessons of that story deserve a blog post of its own and I aim to write one. For now, I will say the obvious, that Cambridge was an academically challenging place, and the less obvious, that it was sometimes daunting without the warmth of the MCKL community. Yet, I miss it, both MCKL and Cambridge. Still, though somewhat cliché, I carry with me both parts of my experience in my approach to life as a lifelong learner because both academic contexts have taught me to question my beliefs and never falter away from a productive argument. 

That brings us to the question, “What am I doing now?”. I am writing this article on a Firefly plane to Singapore and the reason I can do so is because I found a job that is flexible. While in Cambridge, I began a part-time job providing admissions assistance to students applying to Cambridge. The nature of this job is akin to private online coaching such that I can do this job anywhere around the world. I can also meet clients from around the world as many of my students are based in UK, Hong Kong, China or Singapore! I have not achieved the status of digital nomad yet, though it is a long-term goal!  

When I graduated, I turned the initiative full-time and now spend about 20 hours a week providing private tutoring assisting students in Law admissions into Cambridge and more recently revising their Law degree material. It is a growing endeavour, but it pays the bills, and I am excited to see where it goes. During the process I also realised I missed practicing as a lawyer, thus after the busy seasons of tutoring (my work is very seasonal), I decided to join Lim Chee Wee Partnership, a law firm in Bukit Damansara, as a paralegal for two days a week. I am grateful for finding a law firm which accommodates the flexible schedule I have. This arrangement that I have is novel and is unlikely to remain the same for years due to certain practicalities and life goals I have, but it works very well for now! This unique permutation of experience I have now is still very new, and I will likely write another blog once I have spent a few more months at the law firm, so if my life experience so far inspires you to try something new or simply learn something novel, do keep up to date on my journalling through life! 

I guess that is what this article is as well: a journal. I am making my way through what author Paul Millerd has called the ‘The Pathless Path’ and excited to see the uncertain path forward. Yet, what I can say with certainty is this: that MCKL and Cambridge have given me the skills to traverse this path.  

In September 2024, Brendan will begin the Masters of Laws (L.L.M.) programme in with a scholarship from the Chinese Scholarship Council. He will continue to provide private online coaching of admissions assistance to students applying to Cambridge.