Haters don’t have to hate.

Ouch.

Most of my friends know that I am no big fan of SMU Confessions. The founders are ingenious and the admin team is evidently a hardworking bunch, but sadly most of the posts are groundless, trivial, and/or negative. Yet, it is the one platform which attracts the most honest opinions, such as the one above.

I stopped very long at this one, because it amplifies the mission of this blog. And my heart sank because this student’s points are very, very real. What happens if you hate your university?

As of now, there are 39 likes on this post, indicating that at least 39 people resonate with this post to some extent. I have long recognised that I am somewhat of an anomaly to love the school as much as I do, but I also know that I have been very blessed by circumstances, opportunities and my personality fit to SMU. What happens then, when negative experiences, bad fortune and an ill sense of misfit has beaten one down, to develop an express hate towards the (school) environment?

I took a screenshot of the post and thought very long about it. This post is going to try to address not just this poster, but most of the jaded students in SMU in general. So here goes:

1. If you hate something, don’t try to force yourself to love it. 

It places immense stress on oneself. To straddle the two extremes of love and hate causes a huge cognitive dissonance, resulting in more stress and frustration. In other words… it places one’s expectations way above reality, causing disappointment.

This is the one time to ignore social pressure, even if “so many other SMU students” seem to know where they are going- As individuals, we do not share the exact same circumstances or conditions as anybody in this world. Besides, one must recognise that people, including our own selves, put up masks from time to time: and what others portray to the world may sometimes betray what they truly feel. On that note, it is OKAY to admit to hating something at the moment- better to be honest than to lie to oneself.

Once that is established, we will look at how to COPE with it.

I came close to hating my exchange: Confessions of a Year 4

Throwback Thursday- May 23rd 2013, Lugano, Switzerland.

This blog is called The Happy SMUdent, but the ironic thing is that, personally and for a while now, I have put happiness in the background. And instead, I have consciously put growth on the center stage.

I think a lot of us put pressure on ourselves to be happy, and despair when we face an inability to achieve it. I felt this especially when I came back from exchange- because despite all the photos, despite the all the good times, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head that I did not enjoy exchange. 

Blasphemous, right? A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel to exotic places and only having to pass modules. An experience denied to the very parents who funded us, as apparent by frequent comments of “你是去读书，还是去旅行？(Do you go there to study, or for a holiday?)

But I was naïve, you see. Friends who post their happy photos of suntanning in Croatia, feasting in Munich and partying in Ibiza never photograph themselves crying from homesickness. They never tell you what happens after the snow melts into dirty grey puddles of water, and they don’t video how out of place you could feel in a country where nobody understood your accent.

(Notice I used the word “could”, not “would”, because I do have many friends who felt perfectly accepted and enjoyed their experience thoroughly.)

And lastly, I don’t know whether anyone can relate to this, but it was certainly an issue for me- the guilt at the back of my mind for spending my mother’s hard earned money traveling to places, which she herself has never been able to, nor will ever be likely to see.

And so when I came back I was decidedly unhappy, and I went into a depressed state trying to reconcile with my ill feelings and people’s expectations of happy stories. Sure, I do have many happy stories to offer- look at these photos!:

Striking a pose in Bellinzona, Switzerland

Wrapped up in Lucerne, Switzerland

Enjoying the sunshine and rolling down the hills.

But then there is also this photo, a very private one, that other people don’t get to see:

Don’t be fooled by the smile. This is the aftermath of an emotional break-down.

Look closely: my eyes are red and I have wrapped myself up in a blanket and a fetal position. This is me after I had cried my eyes out on the first day, when after a 16-hour flight, I lugged 40kg of baggage for 3 full hours by myself around the hills of St Gallen. Jet-lagged, cold, locked out of my house for one hour, I was at the point of exhaustion. After sobbing for a good ten minutes, my then-boyfriend managed to snap a photo over Skype of a smile he coaxed out of me. That miserable experience pretty much set the tone for the rest of my exchange.

So the myth is broken: Exchange isn’t always the perfect experience you expect it to be.