Thursday, July 02, 2009 @ 1:55 AM: Long neglected blog
A summer awaiting us... 3 months left for me to enjoy this sunny island before it is back to the grind...
I came back to this idly-maintained blog, and seek some solace in it, inspired by chieh whose blog entries are entirely worth the wait. The pace of the progression, the senses which were invoked by reading the entries, the way feelings are slowly developed layer by layer... how i wish i do write such entries...
I have returned to this sunny island leaving a lot of good memories in Cambridge... as I was talking to Yibing who was packing her stuff and coming back very soon, she had wanted to do anything but just to come back... and in a way there was this nagging feeling that stung me when I was at the Heathrow on how I should have toured Europe before starting my attachment, and while situation presents itself differently with the flu being a serious threat, it is just sooner than later that singapore is going towards community spreading (evident from the rapid rise of local cases as well)
As I was looking at my pleasing and yet disappointing report card of the year, the four set of numbers accompanied by my overall ranking laced with a few nice sentences along those lines by my director of studies, I couldn't help but think of how my year is described by those statistics, how people would look at me... Indeed for some people they have spent all their time on mugging and activities and nothing else, some allocated towards community service and interaction, and some towards on a relationship and studies... While some may say that they advocate more time on activities, they wouldn't deny that they have worked hard... Indeed everyone has... and just like a lot of people would say results is just an aspect of life, I have felt for the first time immense pressure to do well (which might have backfired in the end) and that is really something that you would not feel it unless you are deeply mired in it...
Academics aside, I thought this has been a great year... to have known and made a few friends in my course and outside my course, to find people to bump my ideas, to play in the university bridge team, to play badminton in the homerton badminton men, to talk to the locals and understand about their anxieties and thinkings and aspirations, to help in organising freshers events coming up and involved in the singaporean and malaysian association... and i really appreciate all these things... and something that I am proud of though I do not need to key those information into the CV...
A key lesson in this entire year is to appreciate the nice-ness in everything though they may be sour right from the start... perhaps two years of suffering Cs under HC Biology is not enough, this year it comes in the form of my supervisor's super strict marking in Cells... and I thought I have benefitted from his way of coaching to motivate me to study more... and yups serendipity is the word!!! (If chieh u are reading this!) From the start, I would be wondering all the 2.1s/2.2s that he had given me from the start and I always yearned that 1st from him, though it would never come... sometimes i would have not had a skeleton which my supervisor agreed with, sometimes it is my content that failed me, sometimes when i thought i had everything he would always point out those out of text knowledge to show me there's so much more that i can include... and it is his way of teaching that suits me... one that tells me not to stop and learn more - as much as possible outside what you have to know - which have made me changed my stance towards biology as well... perhaps due to times of drilling in secondary school and JC days... and the joy of self studying and reading up and sharing it had also changed my perspective to studying as well... there's so much in his teaching methods that changed my view of things, and yups u are reading this u should know my choice of subject combination is not just within the marks i've obtained during the tripos :)
thank you for bringing me memories...
