Singing the mid-term blues

I am just so glad the mid-term recess is here. At the very least, I get a break from having to publish and think about the newspaper.

I am not being the cynical NUS student here, but the reality is this "break" is merely a break from regular classes, for us to catch up on our readings and start on our term papers.

I think time is passing by way too fast this semester. And also over the last few weeks, I just seemed to lack any desire to want to blog.

I usually get an idea to blog about when I am outside, but when I get home and turn on the computer, not only do those ideas evaporate, but a certain sloth just gets over me.

But the last 6 weeks has been an eye-opening one for me -- if NUS is a microcosm of Singapore society, then Singapore is definitely not ready for a free press.

The paper had to fend out the possibilities of 2 defamation civil suits against 2 strident student groups that we reported on. I don't want to go into too much details here, except that they just couldn't deal with the fact that they were being reported on for the first time.

They refused to write in, to state their point, saying that it would "implicitly endorse" our paper; but then proceed to tell the NUS dean of students, as we found out, something dramatically quite different.

One contended that they don't even see the need to write it, because this transcends opinions, alluding in his "informal communication" with us, that one of our articles is factless and therefore defamatory.

Some student organisations even had the cheek to tell us that elections are not open to public media, and confronted some of our journalists for their "unethical reporting" -- the bottom line is, who are they, who know nuts about the role of the mass media, are to tell us about what constitutes journalism.

We watched All the President's Men at Dr P's yesterday as a mid-term party of sorts, where we realised we kindda experienced in the last 6 weeks everything the two journalists encountered while exposing the Watergate scandal in 1972.

It occurred to me whether we had any "moral" right to impose our idea of an independent student press on the rest of the NUS students. I mean at the end of the day, who the f*** do we think we are man -- if people are happy living a deluded existence, who are we to tell them otherwise?

I have said earlier that I was sure my time on The Campus Observer would make or break my plans to go into journalism. At the height of all the problems two weeks ago, I was ready to throw in the towel. I was getting burnt by my own baptism of fire.

Journalism is a thankless and tiring job. Chasing down sources for news and what constitutes the mangled concept of the truth saps the life out of me. And in the process, I become everybody's worst friend.

I am not sure right now. I don't want to decide based on the emotive nature of my current situation, I want to make any decisions on the basis of hindsight when this academic year is done with.

Besides really, I don't want to go before God. This whole experience was just to show me what it's really like, to bridge the chasm between those lofty theories and the harsh reality. I doubt He's done doing that to me yet, so I will hang in there for a while more yet.

Meanwhile, however, my primary duties of a student beckons.

I need to go catch up on my readings, and start on the short response paper for gender class, the conceptual basis for my 7000-word ISM dissertation, research and field work for my sociology of religion presentation on Islam and for my term paper for the same class on the religosity/spirituality dictum and of course try to breathe a little at the same time.

I am not so much angry or upset, I am just disappointed, tired and wondering what's the point of doing all these things for the newspaper when nobody seems to give a damn. I just cannnot see even God's point at this time, but I am just going to wait it out and see.

I just hope not being the typical inactive and apathetic Singaporean student will not mean my grades will suffer in the process. Bah!