sechzehn-16

23/3/2011

I decided to study downstairs. Talk about conditioning. For some reason, I thought concentrating on the APPG would block out the thoughts about the cold that were coming to my head. 

I didn’t expect it to work. It did. As I was scribbling the notes, I wasn’t expecting anyone to come. No one in their right mind wants to go downstairs in 0-4 degree Celsius weather to study in the half darkness. I was wrong. Some Chinese guy went down to read what looked like a rather thick book with small font. Never did I think that anybody had the same crazy thoughts as me. The ideas inside my head are not of the regular things. 

This must be the common experience shared by students studying in cold countries. It’s too cold to do anything else, except to sit down and study. Explains why us Singaporean students seem so slack at home, but do well overseas. At home, it’s too comfortable and we tend to be more relaxed and slack more, given that we are familiar with our surroundings and tend to be at ease. However, when put into a new environment, the “flight or fight” mindset takes charge and we end up fighting against the environment and that’s why we tend to do better. Although we may seem to be studying or working in a new place, but the truth is we’re fighting. We’re fighting for our lives, we’re finding ways to adapt and gain acceptance of the new community, and that’s what makes these foreign students so competitive in their studies, why these overseas employees are so hardworking, and why the foreign bosses are toughest. It’s not that we’re cold, aloof or anything like that, it’s just that we have trouble adapting to this environment for now, but we will be alright. 

I shall try to be a better friend to the foreign students in school from now onwards, having understood and experienced being in their position. If this is the pathway to success in the future, so be it. To experience this just to get an overseas university degree, no I don’t mind. I’ll gladly do it. Savor the fight, and the road to the end seems shorter than it was.