In 2025, I worked with the Singpaore Chemistry League team to revitalize SCHL after it’s hiatus. SCHL is a nationwide competition that serves as an open-book parallel to olympiad competitions. Created by students, for students.
Working on this project was a lot different from my usual development experience. Usually, I would be creating something from scratch, and trying to turn my ideas on paper into reality. However, the focus of this development cycle was to migrate the existing code from the previous iteration of SCHL, and refactor the messy code on top of implementing new features. Things like moving from the page router to the app router, and having to dig through api routes that had no doccumentation was something quite fresh to me.
I learnt many things from my time spent on this project. I picked up many new technical skills, such as integrating ClerkJS authentication with my React Project, animating SVGs, as well as honing my front-end design skills in general. Yet at the same time, I also learnt many soft skills that come from working in a team. Minor things such as attending weekly meeting calls, writing meaningful commit comments, liasing with designers and other members, etc. One specific example of this was when I had to work asynchronously on a feature that relied on an API endpoint that was still undergoing development, and I had to reach out to the responsible developer for details and discussion.
Truth be told, I felt like I was the least skilled worker on the team. Everyone seemed like impressive developers with tons of software dev experience, and I would often find myself being unable to follow along in discussions. However, I was quick to learn, and made sure to look up documentation for things I didn’t understand and clarify when I needed help. I truly am grateful to the patience and helpfulness my project lead and fellow team members had.
As of writing, the competition platform hasn’t gone live. Yet, I can confidently say I felt proud of the work me and my team were able to put out, and even more so at myself for being able to contribute meaningfully to something so important. I look froward to any opportunities in the future to work on such projects again!