Missing America

Prof Chua said in class a couple of weeks ago that films and television shows "nudges" out of our current predicament into an imagined space.

Watching Brothers and Sisters on Monday night and then Grey's Anatomy on Wednesday, I decided that maybe I want to live/study in America so much because I am watching too much American television.

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I have neglected the demands of my present everyday existence mulling over my post-graduation plans the first four weeks of school.

I only emerged from three weeks of agony after talking to Chua last Friday (more on that later), but it was like waking up to a nightmare, realising that the first four weeks of school have blitzed past me.

It's two weeks to the mid-term recess, which will be spent entirely on a Heritage class trip to Cambodia, which also means I better start catching up with all I have missed because I won't have time to do that during the mid-term recess.

I attended my first social statistics lecture for the first time in three weeks today and I got realised studying for this class means practising like I used to hate doing for math, 10 years ago.

I also got way too much readings to catch up on for my sociology classes, and of course, for my dreaded science class on evolution. I got my first sociology essay due for my graduate class next week.

And of course, my GRE scheduled for October 12 to start preparing for.

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My resignation from the VCF exco is now complete. Formalised it when I announced it at council meeting Wednesday evening, where I also presented my replacement as evangelism coordinator. I got a little sick of explaining why I decided to resign/quit/whatever.

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At this current rate, I would be applying to the professional masters programme at the graduate journalism schools of Columbia, Berkeley, NYU, UMissouri and UFlorida.

Talked to Prof Chua last Friday and realised I don't exactly know what I want to research for my Phd dissertation yet -- the whole thing with public intellectualisms in post-coup Thailand is a good topic, but I need to learn Thai and I am not too sure if I want to master Thai well that much.

Prof Chua basically asked me why I was in such a hurry to leave for the States, when staying here to prepare myself to better study Southeast Asia would be a wiser thing to be doing and besides, it's such a long academic career...so why rush -- if Thailand and all that stuff is what I want to be doing, which honestly I am not too sure now.

Sheela said talking to Chua is always a religiously enlightening experience. For me, it made me realise once again that I am not sure if I want to spend 5-7 years doing my Phd and spending my life researching and professing somewhere after that.

Maybe when I stumble on something worth my while, that would change -- but for now, a one to two year professional graduate programme in journalism seems to be a better bet.

Now for not only a place on any of the five programmes, but also a full scholarship from them. Failing which, I would be a graduate student at NUS for two more years.

Blah.

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I would kill/die to have another one of those guys' night out dinner and beer thing I did with Justin and Travis back at the corner at Charlottesville. Bleargh.