Ramblings

Teaching, Heroes, Disappointment.

Yesterday during my weekly torture of a 3-hour seminar class, I suddenly felt wave upon wave of disappointment. Title that shot through my head was: "Why NUS History Professors cannot be USP Profs". This feeling was just reified as my professor went on about what was good academic blogging. I don't know why but that last term just seems somewhat paradoxical to me. Academic equals informed, researched, weighted, formal writing. Blogging equates to casual, random, stream of consciousness, opinionated scribblings. Not sure how they go together. Especially if the blog is supposed to chart some sort of reflection. I was initially excited about this idea of reflection journal, because it seemed closer than anything else I've ever done in history, to the USP classes I enjoy so much. But the last debrief by the professor just really brought all my hopes down. I realised that all she wants is to know that we've done our readings and thought about the readings and even better if we summarise them wow. It's not about the quality of thought - as it was in USP - but just stick to the topic, stick to the readings. And blogging, I thought the point of blogging was it make a little more personal, so that we can not just reflect on what we've done in class, but to see how it might apply in our lives. Of course, balance and restraint must be exercised in this matter, otherwise it'll just get mawkish. But nope, it's formal academic writing or nothing else.

Sheesh. Hardly any space for thoughts, for conceptual discussions, for growth of any sort. So sad though - I'm at my final semester in NUS and my best classes have been 2 USP classes, 1 PS tutorial and perhaps just one somewhat noteworthy History class. And guess what classes I've taken the most of and what I am majoring in? Uh huh, History.

C'est pathetique, non?

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Straight after this disgusting 3-hour brain crunch of a class, I get to go for a match - one of those matches where you know you have to win, because you will be the one that makes or breaks it. Great huh.

Okay but at least I won that, even though I think we all didn't expect me to.

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And the last thing, I dunno what kind of dad you had, but one thing I do know is that he died early - when you were just 12 - and left behind a family struggling financially. But you know what, you have a family right now, a family who needs you and loves you, but why don't you want to use this to do what you'd probably have liked your dad to do for you back then?

Why, pa?

~ st*rcr*ss*d ~