That's the question I asked myself a lot as I spent much of Saturday in the Central Library mulling over my Cultural Anthropology paper, after meeting WJ for breakfast at Bukit Timah market.
As you can probably tell by now, it was a bloody waste of time. I found out the library did not carry the journal I wanted and after I spent a good 3 hours trying to find something similar and yielded nothing significant, I gave up because I could not get started on the writing since there was no framework to base my analysis on.
For some reason, while trying to get started on catching up with course readings, I ended up checking out Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
I guess I just need to be able to dream every once in a while.
Maybe it is too premature to think about graduate school when I am barely in my second year. When my GPA/CAP is still way off from second-upper honours, the probable minimum that I would need to get into a good graduate school like Columbia or Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.
And especially when I have no idea how I am going to pay my way through graduate school. Columbia stands out because they have a scholarship that pays full tuition and a stipend. But I think I need to get a loan still, and I probably have to work at ST for 2 to 3 years to pay off my undergraduate tuition fees being paid for by Mom.
In an ideal case scenario, I would want to go to New York upon graduation. Do my one-year M.Sc. in Journalism that will take me into the newsrooms in NY. And then after I finish my Masters, be able to work in New York Times or one of the mega newspapers in America and then go over to London to fulfill my long-held ambition of working at Bush House with BBC News.
Of course you may say it is not necessary for me to do my Masters in order to be a journalist. True. But I would dearly love the experience and being in school at Columbia would help extend my contacts - which are pretty much everything being a journo. So even if it is not in Journalism, it could well be International Relations.
After I am done with journalism, getting my pHd in Sociology or Political Science and going into academia is one option, as is coming back to Singapore to teach in secondary schools and working among young people in shaping their formative minds.
But having said that, all these remain plans of my own, I am not sure whether they are what God has in store for me. For all my grand plans, full time ministry could beckon - maybe campus ministry in Thailand or the Philippines.
Whenever my Secondary 4 class gathers, my ex-classmates would never fail to marvel at how I continue to be able to chase my dreams with such gusto. Not so long ago, we would lie down on the tarmac of what used to be our parade square in school at night and talk about our dreams for the future under the stars.
Most of them have settled into a groove that spells practicality and jobs, which is not a bad thing. But for me, the day I stop being able to chase and dream is probably the day I die.
Yet crucially, I am able to chase and dream because I have a hope and an eternity in Christ Jesus. Yet it still continues to baffle me why I am willing to give eternity up for the moment.
And get this - it is only the slight whiff of the infinite possibilities that making me all dizzy from the tentalising prospects and in the process, turning my life upside down.
Nothing is concrete yet. It's not even in a liquid cement state.
I do not understand. I do not understand why at all.
And I do not know if I should find out at all. AL says I should not bother in our lunch meeting that turned into a 4-hour meeting on Wednesday.
It used to be so easy to say aye to God, I wonder whatever happened to that ease.
"I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the Lord is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to to do - this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it." - Romans 7:15 - 20 (NIV)
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