My CCA

I admit making a post about my CCA now is a bit late, but I wouldn't have known my CCA-members better earlier in the year, when I had just joined. My CCA is EC³, which stands for Electronic Communications and Computer Club. It's basically the equivalent of the Infocomm Club in other schools, except EC³ (referred to as EC3 from now on since I'm tired of typing sup tags) is more specialised. As Lu Yang, the secretary/treasurer of the Exco (Excecutive Committee) explained to us, the main goal of EC3 is to win awards and competitions, not have fun like other CCAs. In fact, in EC3's (and HCI's) history, it once had a "Golden Age", during which it was considered an Elite club, not unlike the Elite Sports we have now. Currently, it is based in Computer Lab 5, with the Sanctum connected to it. Officially, its hours are from 1430-1730 on Wednesdays and Fridays. Unofficially, it's from about 1330-ish to 1830, when the lab is closed.

There is a long process to go through if you want to join the club, which is longer than most other CCAs. Firstly, you have to go for the trials. There is a test, which is quite complicated and includes questions on creators of stuff and even network frequencies. A Sudoku puzzle and some other puzzles round up the theory test, with a programming task coming after this. Then, you have to go for an interview, in which some members of the club will, well, interview you. After this first round of trials, there is a second round for those shortlisted from the first round. In the second round, all the shortlistees will gather together and a couple of members will play icebreaking games with you. While the games go on, each shortlistee will be called to the Sanctum, where he'll get a second interview. The seniors have told me (after the second round, of course) that the purpose of those games is to see how we interact with each other. Those chosen from the second round are technically part of the CCA, but there is a final test: the camp. It is the first club session for a new member, and the member stays from Friday afternoon to Saturday. This ensures that the new member can fit in with the other members.

This year, there are 6 new Sec 1 members, including me. Although a former EC3 member told us that Aphelion had had many people in EC3 over the years, this year seems to be an anomaly: 3 of the 6 are from iSpark, unless you count another Sec 1 member from iSpark who left EC3 early in the year, in which case there would be 4 out of 7 members from iSpark. Of the rest, 1 is from Ortus, 1 is from Pro-ed, and I can't remember about the last one.

Now, onto the actual CCA itself. EC3 is largely student-run, as the seniors do most of the work, including organising events, teaching, and other stuff. The teachers mainly come in once in a while to check on what we are doing. After all, gaming is illegal, after all. Friday sessions are generally considered more "main" than Wednesday, as we just read up on general knowledge and maybe work on some of the work given by the seniors. On Fridays, we have actual training by two of the senior members, one Sec 3 and one Sec 4. For now, we are working on C++ although they say that we are going to start on web development, namely Javascript.

I feel that EC3 is a better CCA than most others and indeed, some of my classmates have expressed similar opinions when I told them about EC3. The seniors are really friendly and help a lot with our work. Best of all, there is no physical exercise or punishment, unlike the uniformed groups which many of my friends are stuck in. Thus, I think EC3 is a really good CCA.