Academically speaking

Commencement yesterday was too much of an event for my liking. 

I was late by half an hour for my 10am interview because I stayed up the night before watching Nadal traumatically end Federer's 5-year reign as Wimbledon men's singles champion, and couldn't exactly wake up on time. 

And I messed up the interview by going on ad naseum about the details of ALL my travels which was overwhelming to say the least, and made me look like an insecure bastard trying to show off, to say the worst. 

And everybody in the auditorium saw it. Bah. 

The ceremony was predictably a bore, but amidst the hustle and bustle of prancing around for picture opportunities with random friends after it ended, the mother couldn't wait where I asked her to at the cultural centre and consequently almost lost my degree scroll when she left it behind to try to look for me. 

But because this post is not about her, mother rant will just end there -- simply because with my mother, it's really just more of "same, same but different" so there's nothing new to say about what I fundamentally think/feel about her. 

Today's ritualistic ceremony marked the official end of my basic education. Quite honestly, I am quite glad I managed to emerge relatively unscathed (read: second upper honours intact) after quite a personally trying academic year. 

I think my results speak for itself. Only 1 A grade in 10 subjects for the year and the rest are a combination of different variation of B grades, including the honours/senior thesis which was a shocking B grade. That I managed to emerge with my class of honours barely intact was in itself a massive achievement. It was akin to crawling towards the finishing line in a marathon. I didn't exactly finish very well although it wouldn't have made any difference to the overall scheme of things even if I had gotten an A for the thesis. 

The supervisor didn't sound too pleased I wasn't pleased with the grade. I think he thought that I didn't care that much because he thought that I didn't put in much effort and that as long as it didn't affect my place at Columbia, I didn't care too much. 

I was upset precisely because I thought I had put in much time, money and effort into this. But in the end, I couldn't fault the examiners' comments about my work, simply because I not only agreed with them, but already somewhat knew that about my work when I turned it in all those weeks ago. 

At the end of it, I am in fact rather grateful because the B-grade did affirm a few things I already knew about myself. 

First, it was perhaps wise I didn't pursue the Phd track because I lack the temperament and the calibre for it at the moment. The thesis always felt so parochial towards the end as I was stuck in the history of the whole project. It felt like a personal indictment of LKY and his political misdeeds in the 1950s and 1960s when sociology, historical or otherwise, should always be about objective knowledge. 

I read Yeap's A+ thesis and I realized how far I had strayed from what I had perceived in pre-thesis times, to be my strength in theory. I am just way too restless for serious academic work at the moment. I just have too much of a desire for some form of political action in the broadest sense right now, something journalism would undoubtedly be an outlet for. 

In the short to medium term, I do envisage journalism to be an outlet for a much more accessible type of intellectualism for me. Ideally, I hope to engage in a longer form of journalism, dealing with magazine documentary type of reporting about social justice related issues. The recent Siem Reap photojournalism expedition introduced me to that and I want to pursue that further in graduate journalism school. 

Also, I realized I may have moved on from sociology academically. If I do pursue further studies after Columbia, it would probably be in international relations or political science. Issues relating to social class and race/ethnicity continue to fascinate me, but I guess no definitive decisions need to be made about this for now so I would just continue to read and maybe report about it -- maybe even making it the topic of my masters' project. 

I do think attending NUS was perhaps the best local option I could have taken, but this is due in no small part to the role USP played. Simply put, my NUS degree would have just been a degree without the opportunities on USP. It gave me an education and an edge that is difficult to quantify but yet so palpable. 

xxx

Not so random note about the opening session of the commencement season being specially set aside to celebrate "students' achievements" and raise the university's standing.

BAD idea NUS, because for one, I barely saw a handful of us in the 300-odd pool who qualified as such -- logistics director for mathematics club does not count, so does engineering colours award recipient. Farhan's research achievements leading to his admission into Harvard's biology Phd program counts, as with David's case competition winning streaks. Unfortunately, being NUSSU president doesn't really count as well, but this is just personal opinion. 

Also, achievements of students should not be taken out of their context. Rituals like these are also meaningless if students are not allowed to graduate with their friends whom they have gone through good and bad times together for the last 4 years. Sure, this special session may meet short term organizational goals, but in term of long term ones, this fails miserably. 

For me, I was caught in a catch-22 situation. It was a massive honour for me to be selected for this ceremony, but if not for everything USP has done for me, I would not have agreed to graduate without my friends. 

Besides, why is the ceremony for USP, apparently the premier undergraduate programme in the university, lined up as the last one? Wouldn't it be more in line with long term organizational goals, which should include the cultivation of a particular culture which is not possible with so many changes to meet short term objectives, to have the talent programs in NUS, i.e. USP and the conservatory open the commencement season?

Stop shooting yourself into the foot, dear school. You've done a lot to make us more globally aware people, so don't shortchange yourself.