STABBING CUM SUICIDE AT NTU

Hi everyone... It has indeed been awhile since my last post. However, I guess it takes an event such as that which happened in school today to bring out our innermost reflections and thoughts from where we have kept them internalized and safe.
From an anonymous source, I first learnt of this incident at 11:30am. I recall my first thought being: This is not different from the high school/university shootings in the United States. Thank god for Singapore’s strict gun control laws in this respect—but we’ll talk about this another day. The fact is, given the deluded motivations of the perpetrators, whether in Columbine or the University of Virginia or in NTU, it remains that these were ordinary students, who took to arms to express themselves and who ultimately paid the price with the taking of their own lives. IT IS FORTUNATE THOUGH that all the student in Singapore had to use was a kitchen knife.
What I did consider was what could possibly motivate a final-year electrical engineering student in the midst of his Final Year Project, to engage in an all-or-nothing attack on his project supervisor. I am a in my 3rd year reading Aerospace engineering, and given the commonality of Final-year-project structures, I understand that the student must have been in the final stages of his project or might have submitted his draft to his prof. My guess is that the student was deeply traumatized and upset because his prof could have admonished him on his project or that his project was performed incorrectly or not in prof’s favor, and given that this is near the end of the project date already, he did not want to receive an unsatisfactory grade, or that he knew that such a grade would pull down his GPA or result in him not being able to graduate.
At this point in time though, it is too early to pass judgment as to the motivations/causes/triggers behind the attack in NTU this morning until more clues/information is available.
In any crisis, we shore up what we can and for now, what’s important is the unfortunate prof who was the victim. I do hope that the Prof is recovering well.