Kuen Cheng Career Week 2019 Overview

Jointly by:
Ng Choon Hau (Sr1A)
Isabel Goh Ern Zi (Sr1ScB)
Tan Yi Khai (Sr1ScD)

Teenage life can just flash away right before your eyes and you wouldn’t know it, therefore it’s totally normal for Senior 2 and Senior 3 students to be clueless as to their future careers. Even if they’ve already got everything planned out nicely, first-hand information about some less popular jobs may be a bit difficult to find. In order to help the students understand better about life at work, Kuen Cheng High School proudly presents Career Week –  with the main event focusing on a series of talk and workshop held after school at the music room and C9 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday respectively in the week of 15 to 21 July 2019.

Monday Workshops – TV Host and DJ

Media enthusiast-students were certainly stoked to find out about the popular AiFM DJ Wong Min Ming and TV host Xiao Yu coming to Kuen Cheng to give students an insight into what their jobs is really like. Besides Senior 2 and Senior 3 students, Broadcasting Club members got to sign up for the latter workshop too.

Wong Min Ming introduced students to the various types of broadcasting, which ranged from vlogging on YouTube to delving into the mechanics of sound mixing. She also showcased various types of host personalities. Some of them include the comedic variety show host and the fast-paced serious news anchor. Getting into this line of work certainly requires some fast thinking skills under your belt, as proven by high school debaters being the majority of those who have fielded the positions. Voice is certainly something not to ignore, as it is crucial to perfect your voice to suit the need and the standard of a company.

Students got to dive into the endlessly work-filled world of a TV host, learning through Xiao Yu’s workshop. The requirements for becoming a successful host include having a multitude of hobbies and knowing how to appeal to the masses through good improvisation skills and speaking tones, which the latter wasn’t readily available when Xiao Yu first started out on her show Go Travel! Emotional and mental stress management as well as insane amounts of prepping is other things to greatly consider when picking this career since they’re taxing but vital for success. On the brighter side of this career, you get to meet famous celebrities from around the globe and interview them to get them to spill their juicy secrets.

Wednesday Workshops – Fitness Instructor and Café Owner

Wednesday was a day with careers generally aimed towards male students, namely fitness instructor and café owner. Certified personal trainer Hui Wei was invited to host the fitness instructor workshop; while the café owner workshop was hosted by young entrepreneur of the VCR Café Andrew Lee.

Hui Wei led bushy tailed attendants of her workshop through her work life as a personal trainer. Many people think that fitness instructors are magicians, people who don’t require high academic skills or someone with skills that everyone will eventually obtain growing up; but she threw all of that out of the window. Fitness education is expanding to reach more and more fields, with basics like sports conditioning, general fitness training, post-rehab training and triathletes group training. Difficulty in transferring fitness concepts to clients, time restrictions and social anxiety are among the many common challenges fitness instructors face. It’s safe to say that there’s many field of knowledge and various obstacles in fitness instruction like any other career.

Those wanting to grow up to become a café owner certainly didn’t miss out on Andrew Lee’s workshop. The young entrepreneur of the popular VCR Café has certainly been through some setbacks in achieving his success today, going from minor roof leaking to major machinery breaking down. Even when faced with all this thrown at his face, he stood tall and expressed great resilience in overcoming his problems. Andrew noted some qualities every café owner should have, for example, a cheery and sociable attitude, an innovative mind to come up with recipes and attentive eyes to notice trends in what customers fancy at that moment of time.

Friday Workshops – Nurse and High Heels Designer

Contrasting with Wednesday’s workshops, Friday’s workshops introducing the inside of nurses’ and high heels designers’ working lives are mainly pandering towards a female audience. The workshop for the nurse career was conducted by Ms Sau Ai Leng, whereas Rhea Tan hosted the high heel designer workshop.

This year, Ms Sau Ai Leng accepted our invitation to give our beloved students a talk regarding nursing. She pointed out that a nurse, first and foremost must care about people as nurses are given the chance to make a difference in all the lives that crosses his or her path. In hospitals, schools, the military and even on cruise ships, nurses have a diverse working environment as risks of injuries can happen anytime and anywhere. Ms Sau also added that Malaysian nurses with a license are also recognized as working and legal medical personnel in other commonwealth countries.  Nurses can also opt to work independent of the hospital by becoming an air steward or stewardess, dabbling in business such as confinement centers or nurseries. Ms Sau ended her informative talk by sharing some personal stories of hers from her 27 years of experience working as a nurse as well as those from her colleagues. Those who are interested may contact Ms Sau Ai Leng at 03-7491 1362 or her email: saual@sunway.com.my.

As for the high heels designer Ms Rhea Tan, she was once a student in Kuen Cheng, and what made it even more interesting is that she was once a student of our current Deputy Principal, Madam Chong Siew Fah. She went on about cooperating with a few different companies including Samsung, Focus Point, Lynda Rahim and so on. She was meant to create a shoe design that could fit into the custom of those events. During the collaboration with Focus Point, she made a shoe design that was based on the idea of a Japanese fish market. She continued on with her speech about her process of becoming a shoe designer. As soon as she graduated from Kuen Cheng, she entered SML Fashion Academy to further her studies. She further on insisted that being a designer might not be good source of income so if our students insist on becoming one, a passionate attitude is fairly important.

Overall, the workshops were a huge success. Students certainly didn’t walk away from these talks given by industry experts since they acquired new knowledge on careers they may pursue in the future. Workshop hosts had a blast, too, as they genuinely enjoyed hanging out and interacting with our students.