What is your biggest regret and why?
I can’t believe that I actually got this question during an interview, totally got stunned & replied with a very thoughtful cheesy as hell answer. “I wished that I have treated the people in the past, who I am not as close to now, better and valued their presence. Now, with university and my CCAs, my life has been going so fast and busy but I believe there is always time to spend wit those who matter. As of now, I’m trying to make a consistent effort to make time with the people who matter in my current life and not take them for granted. So that this regret will never happen again.”
Week 8 was the craziest stretch of 6 days ever; total lack of sleep & I felt like the life was sucked out of me. 2 mid terms, 1 presentation and 1 mid-term. The actuality of everyone else around you whose mid-terms ended already killed the little motivation I had remaining. The emptiness feeling after Throwback ended quickly diminished as I was swamped with the much amount of work that I have been ignoring due to Throwback. I still lacked the focus that I was greatly wishing will come to me. Ain’t that easy to switch mindsets back to closet mugger mode, especially when the mind is drifting around so much these days.
The time weren’t spent on revising for my mid-terms, but rather to actually learn what I had learnt for in the first half of the semester, as I had no idea what was going on most of the time during lessons. I thought I had the ability to catch up after missing out a lot due to Throwback, but the modules this semester were more demanding, so it was catch-up time once again. I had to do 3 fucking cheat sheets again; type-written 1 of them because there was just not enough time for myself. I literally finished my finance cheatsheet in 1 day and survived on 4 cups of coffee that day: morning, afternoon, evening & past midnight. You can’t imagine the joy that I was displaying when mid-terms were finally over, I was literally bouncing around in MRB like an idiot and getting judged by the public (it was NUS Open day) but I didn’t care one little bit. I was in no mood to go out with anyone (even though I was asked out); all I wanted is to go home and lie on my bed. Doing nothing never felt so good. Omg is this what happens when you grow old hahas. I felt so burn out, so much that all I wanted to do is be myself, do nothing but sleep. I ran at the late night after my deep slumber, it was such a therapeutic night which I truly need with everything coming at me.
Flashback to A Levels, it was the first real ‘bell curve’ that we experienced, but the competition just get harder when you enter university. This was the video back then that really inspired me to push myself to the limit. There were a few good quotes in the video, but there was one which truly left a big impression on me. “If you want to be good, you gotta keep at it. Because while you’re resting, somebody out there is working.” There were 2 reasons why I loved the video: 1) It teaches you that you cannot afford to slack because someone else is going to be better than you.” and 2) How much effort you are willing to put in to go after the thing/goal/dream that you want.
Past hell week, finally penned down extensively my remaining deadlines for the semester and there’s still so much to do! The short back was something which I really needed but it is back to reality once again. Many deadlines upcoming, so it’s just taking it one at a time as pacing myself. Being flooded with the academics stuff, it made me question my interest & passion back in dance and I took damn long to decide whether I wanted to join back TB3. What seemed to be an easy decision a month ago became an agonising thought which troubled me and tugged at my heartstrings. It wasn’t easy to put my anxiety into words, because I was in such a unique situation and maybe I was overthinking many issues whoops. Thanks to M & Y for hearing my worries and the small pockets of encouragement; in the end I took Y’s advice and followed my gut. Haha isn’t that something I said before… following my gut feeling? Scary how you could forget something when you let your emotions get the better of you. Trust the gut feeling, and believe that everything will fall into place.
There’s still 4 weeks remaining, and poof half of my university life is done. OVER! 2 years just like that, time really passes very fast. Many times something that happened just yesterday felt like a week ago. Amidst everything that has been happening (seriously it has been too crazy), other than me having to work extra doubly freaking hard (please do so nick there isn’t much time remaining in semester), self-reminder to know that everyone is fighting their own battle and not be so quick to jump to my own judgements. Judging is really just a sign of your own insecurities, limitations & needs; such a true statement, so true…
Back to work. “A work in progress. And the possibilities are endless.”
Nick // Guardian 