midway

This term's courses, like last year's but even more so, have made me reflect and made me ponder and made me go away from the seminars wanting to explore and uncover and discover and rediscover. I sometimes wonder what it would be like taking an MA back home - horrifyingly they actually have exams for one of the MAs I had a look at on the NUS site, although I fail to see the logic behind that. I wonder what it would've been like taking a course in Sydney, although I suppose there I would've eventually met some Singaporeans (I haven't in Brighton, just a couple of Malaysians).

So I am glad to be here, and not just because of the view out of my window. I am glad I handed in that resignation letter and took a step into the unknown - to a place I only knew of from brief descriptions on travel websites ("London-by-the-sea") and some blogs I managed to dig up. I had emailed an alumni whose name I had found on the university website and he had only positive things to say - of course he did, his name was the contact for Singaporean students after all. I emailed the course convenor, who would later go on to teach me but only for a couple of weeks as she had to lay everything down and fly to Australia where her husband had been in an accident. I'm also very glad for having cousins just a couple of hours away in London and where I'm headed this weekend for CNY eve dinner. It's nice to have some family around.

It's already mid-Feb and I'm halfway through the spring term and my last month of classes. Lecturers have already started dropping those horrendous two words in class - "term paper" and on Wednesday the professor made us all talk about what topics we're interested in and in two weeks we have to give an outline and a bibliography. The other lecturer even dropped the word 'dissertation' when I went to see her on Tuesday to borrow a book. 20,000 words. Horrors.

Then again since I've already done two term papers of 5,000 each (and ended up writing about 5,500 instead) I suppose 20,000 wouldn't be too painful. You can remind me about this post when I'm screaming in pain later in the year.

Oh and xin nian kuai le!