Check In Time! #4 (with a lot of random life updates, and musings about the semester with friends)

2:06am, Singapore. I should not be awake at this hour– there’s no need to anyway, submissions are over for me and what’s more, I have a hair appointment early next morning (deciding to highlight my hair brown and cut my fringe, something which I have never done. Let’s see if it turns out to be the greatest regret of 2020! 😉 ) But alas, Tiktok. Today was a good day though! A bag that I bought online finally arrived 🙂 (picture attached). And I’m hoping to be a fish parent this holiday (yup, gonna get pet fishies and hopefully not overfeed them. Any experienced fish moms or dads here? Feel free to leave a comment below!)

Ever since submissions ended, I have been shamelessly living the life of a sloth. Save for outings with my family and friends (that are definitely more subdued, thanks to the current pandemic 🙁 ), I have been spending the majority of my days lounging on my bed without a care in the world. That has been changing a little this week though- with me just starting a volunteer job, and deciding to also take a free online course for fun. I guess I have been trying to organize through my Google Drive, especially with all the lecture notes and readings haphazardly placed (and me overthinking about all the mistakes I made in the stuff I submitted… welppp.) On the bright side, it’s a good learning experience at least. Hopefully I won’t blunder into the same haystacks as this semester.

I’m also starting to think back on some of the conversations I had with friends this semester about student woes. Mostly generic ones, but just things that I have been starting to think about more recently. I remember mentioning to another university friend once, with him in agreement– that we students are actually really amazing, and we don’t give each other enough credit for that. We somehow manage to decipher through loads of readings and academic journals, attempt to convince our professors that we understand the material (even when we don’t, at least for me…) and (sometimes) actually succeed at it. And we do that for 12 whole weeks. I somehow feel like an imposter on Among Us when doing so- just waiting to be called out on my bluff (especially when writing research essays!!) (sidenote: for some reason I was so distracted by Among Us and Reddit during recess week, but now when I have all the time in the world, I somehow don’t want to use them anymore….)

Another conversation I had with another friend from a previous inter-school event was about procrastination. I always viewed procrastination as a bad thing, that it’s always the silent killer of productivity. But he encouraged me to think of it from another perspective: that procrastination can be seen as a sign of your body wanting you to take a break. And instead of resisting procrastination, by giving in to it (to a certain degree), it may actually be good.

A final conversation I would like to highlight is with a friend from my previous school. I would self-describe myself as an anxious, ambitious student- just like many of us here. He told me this pro tip that he uses: to go in with a neutral mindset. I countered and asked: but isn’t it good to set targets? To have expectations? He replied that such a way allows him to avoid major disappointments and surprises that might spoil his experience. Hmm. Indeed food for thought.

Okay, it’s now 3am, so I really should sleep. Otherwise I can’t wake up on time tomorrow– I suck at mornings. But ending off this post with the promised attached photo of my bag purchase today! Am really happy with it, and I hope everyone gets the time/opportunity to do something that makes them happy after this stressful semester. This post was really haphazard with many jumbled thoughts, but I hope it was enjoyable and relatable nonetheless!