At the back of my mind

It's clearer to me now what people mean when they talk about how constricting the Singapore education system is. University assignments seem to be much more open-ended, but there's always this nagging voice at the back of my mind, asking me questions like, "What types of logic are acceptable to the markers?" or "How do they want me to write this?" If it's a HW101 summarizing exercise, we tend to ask, "How many words?" if the limit is not specified.

Sucks.