Revisiting America

Almost everybody were doing the touristy thing when we were at Harvard Yard, while on the scavenger hunt trail that took us around the Boston area that Wednesday afternoon. Rub the shoe of John Harvard's statue, check. Posed photograph with a V hand sign, check.

It was when I decided I was having none of that touristy nonsense and turned around, partly looking for something nicer to photograph on the day after a huge snowfall the night before, that I saw this stunning view of the winter sun setting in the horizon.

On hindsight, this resonated with my return to America, eight months after my first trip kindda left me a mental and emotional wreak. I had returned to Singapore with more questions than answers, and spent the better part of the time since recovering from the fallout.

But as consistent with the cyclical nature of life, every sunset preceeds a new dawn. In many ways, this latest trip to America lifted the senioritis gloom that has pervaded my existence since my mid-summer jaunt to Virginia and New York. While part of it was induced mainly by the whole relationship fiasco that unfolded there, a larger part of it has mainly got to do with my uncertain post-graduation plans.

After saying how I will never succumb to the status quo or any prescribed career path for the longest time, I found the going rough when it was time to actually walk the talk. On hindsight, it is quite baffling that it didn't occur to me that I should expect the whole trail blazing act of going on a path not travelled, to be any less trying.

But being at the EPIIC symposium at Tufts changed everything, giving me a fresh impetus to finish off my remaining weeks as an undergraduate with a bang and to reimagine my post-graduation options. It was a second wind personified, and one that utterly re-energized me.

Talking about ways global poverty and inequalities can be alleviated, necessarily reinvigorated the idealist in me. Being in the company of other young people who had the same desire to make a difference and more importantly, people who made a career out of effecting social change helped me see that it was distinctly possible to do the same.

This gave a lot more shape and substance to the whole desire of not wanting to pursue the money and material riches path, by articulating the alternative possibilities presented by the insofar unelucidated notion of social entrepreneurship - which is adapting the logic of capitalism with human agency and a social conscience, in countering the cruel logic of capitalism that is manifest in the widening income gap globally.

That I was among the company of idealists also helped. While the term "idealist" might be frowned upon in Singapore, it certainly wasn't at the symposium. The workload on the year-long EPIIC colloquium at Tufts, of which the symposium was the finale, was so intensely insane that it meant one had to be intensely insane to even want to go on it - which was what made EPIIC students stand out from everybody else at Tufts or even the "rest" of America and the world.

Over the week at Medford, I was consequently given a literal boost. I was lifted to a higher plane of perspective. I saw that I could use my journalism to bring attention to poverty and inequality related issues. I got reacquainted with the social role of journalists as a form of checks and balances that captured my heart, mind and soul all those years ago.

I was reassured that my keen sense of social and moral justice is "normal" and "human". Being in Singapore and bombarded with government propaganda and its subsequent manifestations of "technologies of the selves", I always get told being idealistic is impractical and won't get me anywhere. I was also jaded by the sheer amount of work on Campus Observer, and by how advocacy is divorced from academic work here.

That I therefore went into this trip incredibly frustrated is perhaps no surprise. After all the social science I have done, after being enabled with a critical mind by my government-funded education, I get told that it is bad to be thinking like that. Interviewing FS for the honours thesis in Boston was such a nerve-wreaking experience - not lest induced by paranoia around me (read: climate of fear), I thought I wouldn't be allowed back into Singapore.

While I already sensed that going into academe right after my time as an undergraduate is not something I want to do, this trip somwhat confirmed it a little more. I just don't fancy myself having the intellect capacity to sustain the relentless production of research essays after research essays at the moment, which can get rather mechanical if one lacks the substance and passion.

Besides, given the beleaguered socio-political state of affairs here, I want to know what I can do to change it now, rather than theorize about what other people do about it. While academe is not typically so divorced from advocacy, given the political situation in Singapore, the idealized state doesn't seem to be possible in the near future at all. Furthermore, I want my work to be more accessible, to be read by a larger public, so that it can make an impact that is beyond the academic community.

Graduate school, thus, does not have to be a research Phd for now, it should preferably be a "professional" masters, something that would help me be a better journalist - if not journalism at Columbia, then perhaps something like international relations at the Fletcher School to compensate for my substantive lack in my undergraduate education. The Phd might still beckon in future, as might the law school option.

I also realized on this trip I need to wrestle a lot more, in deciding the kind of journalism I want to be doing, even if I do know it would probably be some form of international affairs reporting. And for that, I am immensely grateful to Will, an editor friend I got to know almost serendipiously in Singapore a few weeks ago, whom I manage to meet at his office in DC a few days ago.

Talking to him reminded me of the time when I remembered being so fed up with chasing after mindless stories as a reporter that had no consequence. I always liked being able to give my stories more depth, analysis and criticality, instead of just straight reporting every single time. I know spot reporting is regarded as a bread-and-butter ability and has the potential to lead into a massive breaking investigative piece, but it is also immensely energy sapping and takes me away from what I want to be doing.

Maybe Will also went through what I am experiencing right now, but given his illustrious career in magazine journalism for one so young, it is incredibly reassuring and uncanny that whatever he said merely gave a semblence of assurance and certainty to the things that were already on my mind and heart, particularly that no matter how sure I think I am, I can never be too sure. I just need to know the market, keep an open mind and create/pursue opportunities that come my way.

Honestly, I know there are still many things I don't know, but I am definitely in a better post-trip state than the last time in July. I was notified of my acceptance onto the NUS sociology masters programme that comes with full funding when I was in America, but I am not sure if I should take it up even if I do not get an affirmative from Columbia.

The important take-away is the realization that at the end of the day, ideals are also principles. But it's a wonder that after being drilled by "moral education" and the importance of living a principled existence when I was younger, that my desire to do just that, is met with such derison by most of my peers now. Perhaps it is not enough to just know - you need to be morally courageous to act upon what you know.

And perhaps, this would be an immense lesson for me not to ever follow the crowd again. That whenever I am faced with a situation like I did at the Harvard Yard again, I would keep the faith, trust God and maybe turn around to find that stunning new dawn just as I did a fortnight ago.