Helping Hand

Can you please introduce yourself?
Hi, my name is An Wen. I’m a year 3 psychology and sustainability university student at SMU.

What made you want to study psychology?
I’m studying psychology because I like humans—I like to understand how humans behave. And I feel like through understanding human behaviour, you actually unlock the door to a lot of other opportunities on how you can interact with them a lot better.

Were you always interested in psychology?
I was always interested in more humanities-based fields of study. But unfortunately, I came from business in polytechnic. I did it for three years, but at the two year mark, I realised that business wasn’t for me. That’s why I chose to deviate to the field of humanities in university.

Why were you not keen on doing business?
Not to put down any business majors, but I just feel like business doesn’t really have a lot of meaning to me. I guess I’m more of a people person. Not in the extroverted sense, but more like I just want to help people, and business doesn’t really do that for me. Even if it does, it does it indirectly, but I would like to make a more direct impact on people.

What made you want to pursue business in the first place?
I didn’t know what I wanted to do after secondary school. Then I realised that business is quite broad, and I think having a business diploma never hurt anyone (laughs).

Not a bad diploma to have at all! So what are some of your hobbies?
They’re quite boring—I just run and gym. Other than that, I used to write. But because of uni, it’s been a while since I wrote a piece.

What kind of pieces do you write?
I write blog-style posts centred around topics that a lot of youth struggle with, mostly because I’m a youth too. When I write, I’m really just speaking from my own personal experiences. If it ends up helping someone out there, that’s good enough for me. It’s not meant to be professional or anything—just a casual outlet for me to express myself.

What’s the last piece you wrote?
I think the last one was around 10 months ago. It was about my mental state at that point in time. But I tried to tie it to relevant topics that most youth would go through like heartbreak or dealing with the stress of university.

In terms of your career, do you have a direction that you’re working towards?
Over the summer, I interned at Fei Yue, one of the larger charities in Singapore.

I was placed under the personal outreach department, and my main role involved visiting the homes of lower-income families—specifically families who weren’t sending their children to preschool to find out why. I actually learned from working here that preschool isn’t mandatory in Singapore; only primary school is. Still, preschool gives kids a clear advantage, both academically and socially.

For many of these families, they either don’t have the financial means to send their kids to school or aren’t fully aware of the benefits of preschool. So my role was really to understanding why they were hesitant to send their children to school and seeing if there was any way we could support them. Fei Yue offers an additional service called Kickstart, which provides subsidies to lower-income families, and that was part of what we shared with them.

Through the internship, I realised that while I genuinely enjoyed the work, it’s probably not something I see myself doing right after graduating from uni. The work can be very taxing, especially when you’re emotionally invested in the cases. As a caseworker, you’re expected to take on around 25–30 cases, which can be physically exhausting and mentally and emotionally draining.

Because of that, I’ve started gravitating more towards sustainability—which also happens to be my second major!