Commencement Guest Speaker: Mr. Calvin Chung

Speech by Mr Calvin Chung, Chief Technology Officer and Senior Director (R&D), Ministry of National Development at the Design and Engineering Commencement 2023 Ceremony (C14) for Mechanical and Civil and Environmental Engineering Graduation on Monday, 10 July 2023 at 2.30pm.

Professor S Jayakumar, NUS Pro-Chancellor, Professor Richard Liew, Head of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Distinguished Guests, Parents and Graduates.

1. I am honoured to speak to you today and I promise you this will not be a long speech. I didn’t think that I would be invited to speak at a convocation ceremony. I am not a good speaker and I’ve spent quite a few nights worrying and thinking about what I was going to say. I’ve decided that I would like to share some of my own revelations about work and how they differ from what I used to think when I was schooling.

2. When I was in school, I was a typical average student. I wasn’t particularly bright or outstanding and I never ever got on the dean’s list or participated actively in extracurricular activities. But I think I knew what I wanted to do from a very young age. Tinkering and building stuff has been my passion since young so being an engineer is the natural choice for me. In the 90s, the engineering faculty was a particularly popular choice and I worked hard to get into civil engineering, which was then the branch that was the most competitive to get into.

3. So here’s my first point – choose your job like how you will choose your husband or wife. We are more likely to do well in things we like. Trust me, it’s better for your mental health and also better for the industry by excelling in what you do. You are going to spend more time with your work than your spouse in many of the days to come, so you had better choose one that you like doing. By the way, I am not advocating anyone to “marry” one particular company for life. Rather, I am encouraging you to find the work that you like. Don’t choose one just because of higher starting pay, looks more glamourous, offers better stability or is the latest fad. But don’t worry too much; the margin for error to make mistakes and retry is much higher and way less painful than marriage.

4. Now that many of you are engineering graduates, I believe you are the privileged bunch who have a wide variety of choices – don’t waste this privilege. For me, I did just that. I chose engineering and I really like it and never regretted it. I am glad that I wasn’t lured by opportunities that offer higher pay or better prospects that came along the way. When people talk about work-life balance, what they are really hoping for is less time spent on doing things they don’t like vs what they like. If you don’t want to worry about this problem, find the work that you enjoy.

5. My next point: Change is the only constant. In fact, I view change as the rhythm of life. You might be wondering how this relates to your work-life; let me share a few examples from my experience. After graduation, I was very into structural design. But I soon realised it was not really what I had imagined. I was then given the opportunity to do land reclamation. I was resistant. How fun could moving sand and earth be? To my surprise, I really enjoyed it and found a strong sense of fulfilment growing the liveable space for the country. I was then told that my organisation needed me to be trained in hydrodynamics. It was a national need. By then, I was already more confident to take on new challenges, but I really hated the idea of leaving my wife, family, and dogs to study in the Netherlands for 2 years. I felt pressured to do it and I did do it. I’ve not been overseas alone before, let alone staying in a hostel and having to cook my own meals and wash my own clothes. But I learnt and I adapted and am now brave enough to try some new recipes now and then. But more importantly, with a few years of working experience, I could better appreciate what was being taught and focus on the really important stuff. I did well academically (better than I ever did before) and acquired new knowledge and skills that have really helped me in my work and career. In this day and age where technology and businesses are morphing at breakneck speed, we too must embrace the mindset of lifelong learning as what we’ve learnt today is unlikely to get us through the next 40 to 50 years.

6. So every time I got comfortable in my role at work, new challenges and new work scope were issued. Did I imagine it to be like this when I was in school? Probably not, but it definitely adds more colour to my life. This would likely be happening to all of you. There will also be changes outside work – you will also be meeting new friends, getting married, having kids, and moving to your own place, all these happening at the same time as you cope with the changes at work. So the point is since you can’t stop change, embrace it, and try to enjoy the process. We will never know what we will enjoy doing until we try it. And a lot of time, our mentors and seniors probably know us better than we know ourselves. So heed their advice, try new stuff, and decide for yourselves whether it is for you. The day we refuse to change is the day we stop progressing.

7. The last point I want to make is to find meaning in your work. It is important to know that what we are doing, contributes to the greater good of the community, our country and to mankind. This may sound cliché, but I assure you that this will become increasingly important as you progress in your career. Without a sense of purpose (and I am not talking about earning money for a good life), it is easy for us to get lost. I’ve seen a number of my friends who made the major decision of a mid-life career switch and for those who are lucky enough, to retire early. This is a major decision, and nobody will make such a major shift, without strong impetus. So don’t underestimate this sense of meaning and purpose. While none of them really want to admit it, my gut feel tells me that a major reason was because they didn’t find meaning in their work, even though they have done well enough monetarily. As for myself, as an engineer I see things being built, so I did not face the same mental struggle.

8. This is not surprising at all. In fact, this was hypothesised in the 1940s by Maslow in his concept of the hierarchy of needs. As we progress in our lives, our physiological needs get satisfied, and our psychological needs start to become more important. That’s when we work not only for money but also for the sense of meaning and purpose. And I noticed from my own experience that the retention rate is always much higher in jobs or positions that are easier to relate to meaningfulness, provided they are also reasonably remunerated. Of course, everyone’s degree of needs will differ but most of us will fall within Maslow’s framework. So remember that we all have needs and should pay more attention to them, especially during mid-career not only for yourself but also for the staff under you.

Conclusion

9. I have come to the end of my 3 points. To be honest, I tried using ChatGPT to write this speech, but the speeches were just too unbelievably good to have come out of my mouth. So everything I said here is my own words. I suppose simple speeches like this don’t really get uploaded enough to make a statistical significance in the machine learning process for the large language models – maybe there are some opportunities there.

11. I have heard a lot of people saying that engineering is a sunset industry. I beg to differ. Engineering is a mature and an evergreen industry. We will always continue to build and manufacture things for the foreseeable future and definitely in our lifetime. Talent will always be needed and there are lots of opportunities.
12. Finally, I wish all of you the very best as you step into the next phase of your life, and I hope to see some of you in the industry. Thank you for your time.