Culture Shock in the Malaysian Education

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I'm pretty sure, like me at some point of everyone's life, they would go through the excitement of graduating high school and entering college. The ideal college life, portrayed in movies, of constant partying, meeting boys, the freedom of wearing whatever you want to class and no longer waking up at 6:30am to catch the bus to school. What's not to look forward to, am I right?
Transitioning from a government high school culture to a private college setting gave me a huge culture shock. Suddenly, I was no longer told what and when to study anymore or how to do my own research for my assignments. The secondary education in Malaysia has been so focused on the idea of memorising to succeed and get good grades that they neglected teaching the things that are you would come to use in real life.
Entering college, I realized I didn't know how to write a resume or tell the difference between a resume and a CV. I didn't know the professional way of writing emails or possess any sort of inkling on how to do a presentation. The culture shock was tremendous and if it weren't for my seniors guiding and giving some advice now and then, I'd have been lost throughout my first and second year of college. The feeling of incompetency made me feel as if I was stupid and incapable of such tasks. But it was just the fact that we were never exposed to such skills and environment at a younger age, especially during secondary education period. 
I believe secondary education should be more focused on soft skills and teaching students how to be more independent instead of spoon-feeding them for their entire primary and secondary education and later expect them to be able to give a good presentation in college. I believe education is more than just the ability of spewing out theories and facts memorized from books, it is the understanding of a certain topic and how we are going to express it in our own forms. This helps us explore our thoughts and later shape our identities and who we are as a person.
But with the change in government and all the promising things the education minister has aim to achieve, I hope this will be the beginning of the change in our education to be more versatile and to include more soft skills into the Malaysian's secondary education.

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