The First Week: Confessions of a Year 4

Current mood: Sick and hungover from NYE, Week 1 and BFF’s 23rd birthday party.

Term 2 has a distinctly different flavor from the beginning of Term 1.

Unlike Term 1, there is no orientation period for the Spring term. We are thrown straight into work from the first week of the New Year, regardless of whether we have properly recovered from our NYE hangovers, or from the roller-coaster ride that was the previous sem, for that matter. Perhaps those that have it the worst are my fellow seniors returning from Winter exchange: not only do they have to re-adjust to the humidity, but also the fact that they have to study and actually attend classes.

Term 2 has a different effect on each batch:

For the Not-so-fresh-men, they are no longer riding on the high of orientation camps, although some may have acquired a whole new bunch of soul-mates during their OCSPs in December. Most would have been properly hazed by Term 1, but a fair few would also have secured an Exco position or another. From facing a field of endless possibilities, many would have found one niche or another in school- and that’s important.

Their status would also have changed since 20th December 2013- their first ever GPA for SMU is revealed. Like it or not, friends are ranked, and I have known that to change the dynamics of study groups. Beware of that.

In any case, instructors show no mercy. We are fully expected to know how academics work at SMU, so by Week 3 we will start having assignments due. The same goes for the sophomores, many who would have taken on heavier responsibilities in their co-curricular activities and assumed their term as the new year begins, making it harder to juggle: if so, you are not alone. It was also time to make bigger decisions on which majors to take.

I wasn’t here for my Year 3 Term 2, but I knew by then I had enough of SMU and was ready to explore a new environment, otherwise known as EXCHANGE!!!. I imagine “jaded” would be a good blanket description to some extent or another for these poor “juniors“.

But nobody had bigger decisions to make than the graduating class of Year 4s (or 5s).

Personally, I’m very gleeful that my peers who went on exchange are finally coming back. When they complain about life in SMU I just go “Aww” and have the urge to hug them. They think I’m hugging them out of sympathy but I’m really just bloody glad they are back: last semester has been very lonely, thank goodness for the handful who stayed.

But on a more serious note, Term 2 is decidedly different as well because for many of us, it is our final semester. The concern that frequent accompanies this realization is: What are we going to do after graduation? People often ask me: Are you looking forward to graduation? And here’s my answer:

I neither look forward nor dread graduation. If I looked forward to it, it would seem forever till it comes; if I dreaded it, it would approach sooner. So I appreciate each day as it is- and the day will eventually arrive when it is time.

But here is what is so daunting about graduation, because…

For the final time in our lives, our peers’ timelines and our own will diverge. There were a few times after O levels, or A levels, that some of us chose to pursue a different timeline by taking a gap year, or a 4 year course instead of a 3 year course- but those are insignificant compared to life after University. Friends start making decisions we can no longer benchmark against: When to get married, how fast they switch jobs, when they get promoted, when to move out. When we enter new companies, our colleagues would no longer be all of the same age as us. If we had been going along with the flow, that is no longer an option: we need to make decisions that architect our future on our own terms.

So yes. Time to be more grown-up than ever before.

 

But anyway! I have been invited to be a review writer, so  do look out for posts next week around Friday or so. BRB, quelling excitement at receiving free stuff! 😀