"What are you doing?" -- The dreaded questions and the response that isn't nervous laughter

So all my life I've considered myself fairly good at school. Maybe it's because I'm good at standardised tests, or because I work hard, or because I've been blessed with good teachers and resources. But I'd like to think it was because I have been passionate about learning, and it's not a bad thing to conclude thus; your interest and confidence gets a good boost and you think, hey, this is me and I'll rock my studies. 

Stress and expectations aside, I learnt to take everything about school seriously and every subject was my favourite. It's easy to claim that when you aren't failing (miserably) and primary > secondary school > JC life is as straight-forward as can be. I loved making pretty biology notes. I loved drawing landforms. I loved memorising chunks of texts for history. I loved making social studies mind-maps on recycled paper. I loved memorising lit quotes while walking around the school compound in the evenings. I loved writing poems using facts I learn in class. I loved using new natural world concepts to describe abstract ideas in writing. I loved sitting around with my classmates and doing line-by-line analysis. I loved buckling down and churning out econs essays (in retrospect), because I knew every practice paper, every hour of tutorial prep, every essay plan had to count for something. 

I chose the arts stream because it just seemed like the natural choice for me. It didn't bother me because I knew I was still doing some math. Besides, narrowing down your choices at the JC level is a lot more subtle, less consequential and much less astonishing than choosing a gosh darn major. Oh no... suddenly I have to decide on ONE major? I have to spend 8 x $4k~ on a piece of paper in that field and then go on to hopefully find a job that will pay my bills and contribute to my CPF? Back the heck up!

If you've ever tried asking me what I'm doing in uni, you know that 85% of the time you get [nervous laughter]. If you're lucky, I don't slip into despair and I ask you if you're asking for my major... or the frequency of my emotional breakdowns. 

So as Week 13 comes to a close (I swear it was just yesterday that Semester 2 started), and finals loom overhead, the 3 month summer break draws nearer... and the deadline to...
~ d e c l a r e   a   m a j o r ~ comes devastatingly close, I figured it's time for the low down.

Last Semester, I took the modules I knew I would love. I was studying South East Asian Studies (culture), Religion and Film, Theatre, Lit and Sociology. It was everything I could have wanted academically. Couple that with the stress-free grade-less policy and you've got an extremely happy me.

I started out wanting to take a major in English Lit. I really did. I felt my confidence bounce back in Lit after doing well at As and I applied for NTU English (Lit) and got accepted. But I chose FASS because it gave me a greater sense of confidence and peace (in the brand name yes, not gonna lie). My exposure module in Lit was incredible. I've never not liked literature modules anyway so duh, what else did you expect of me, right? But a restless devil in me was constantly worrying about the quality of my own work and I was always doubting my abilities in Lit. In fact, I did the worst for Lit out of my five modules in Sem 1. It wasn't even that bad but I could tell everyone else there was dead set ready for Literature. They loved it with a passion and more than that, they loved it with confidence in their own competence. Do we love things that we are good at? Or are we good at the things we love? Maybe both? 

The Lit learning curve was really steep to me, a lit student since day one. Does that mean I don't love it enough? I don't think so... It's a part of me and it always will be. I wouldn't be who I am today without my experience in literature. There's a part of me that feels sad I'm walking away from my formal literature education, but I would rather leave now with good memories than to have my lack of confidence scare literature (and my sanity) away for good. Do you see? 

I digress, but I felt that was a necessary sort of last goodbye to the prospect of being a lit major.

Now it seems like I'm all set right? I know what I like, what I don't... why not try to squeeze everything together and take a multidisciplinary minor? Or a double major! Great!

Except I cleverly decided... that in semester 2 of my first year at NUS, a GRADED semester mind you, that I would take the heaviest social sciences!!!!!! Psychology and Political Science!!! Along with Linguistics!! That I have NEVER done before!! ALL THAT falls outside of the amount of credits to spare!!

Semester 2, as you can clearly see, was headed downhill from the very start. My rationale? I didn't want to have to think about the What If I Had Taken Something That Sounded More Substantial throughout the rest of my college life. I wanted to rule out the alternatives. Why didn't I do it from the get-go?? Why now, when it's all going to be graded? Ok... well because I suck at planning, but also because I thought I could jump right into declaring from the list of my favs. I was armed with only the comfort that I learn from whatever gets thrown my way, and that there is always something valuable in the process. And so... here is lesson number one:

1) You Should Have, and you Could Have

I should have and I could have chosen to go to WKW + a minor in Drama. In retrospect that seems to be the ideal life for me. But you cannot tell how things would have turned out. Life, decisions, factors and even your own personality will be in constant flux, right now and for the rest of your life. You're going to doubt your decisions and you're going to regret your choices no matter what you choose. I. know it sounds terrible. I just want consistency myself. As unpredictable and flamboyant and fun-loving as I may be or as you may identify yourself to be, making decisions that have to you have to stick long-term, sucks. And yet flux can be a massive pain in the butt especially when you are surrounded by people who want to know when you will stop your youthful exploration and your "phases" and just choose already. 

How can you tell them simply that the continents are still moving after millions of years? How can you make them see that humans came from microbes, that we are still changing and evolving? Make them see that development and change is still happening and will not reach a point of finality any time soon? How can you possibly point out that in the vastness of existence there is just so much to experience and learn and grow from?! How do they expect you to know anything at all?

Do I know what I'm doing in university? Heck no! I don't even know what I am doing in Life. I don't even know what I want to do and I may never know what I want until one day I wake up and I get a fleeting sensation of contentment and the knowledge that I am precisely where I want to be, before it gets washed over by the very human bother of living as a (insert role here) with responsibilities instead of simply, happily, living to be.

No, I don't know what I want to do if you're asking about my future career plans. But I know I pick up bits and pieces from a life I know I'd like to live. 

I have 3 goals at the moment:

• To inspire, just as I am constantly inspired by the people at TED who thought of doing the impossible
• To be able to learn about the world, be it through science or through the arts, or both 
• To be able to have my own space, because, above it all, I just want to be a Pinterest mom in my spare timeeee lord help I want to washi tape everything.

Lesson 2): Do things that are good for your soul

Do I know what I want? Well, I know what I don't want! Sem 2 was disastrously draining because I found myself away from everything I knew I liked, or at least, everything that felt like home to me. I found that I wasn't socialising enough and it became a vicious cycle of not wanting to change from that inward-looking behaviour. I wasn't engaging in fiction to buffer my brain and stimulate it beyond my daily to-do list. I wasn't listening to my favourite music so I wasn't letting loose. I wasn't meeting friends and I was not performing.

And my modules? I have learnt so much but it just didn't feel like me. I was just trying to put on different personas. I was learning from my friends, picking up political science, linguistics and psychology because hey, cmon, so many people take it, maybe for once, I can be secure in my choices and I won't disappoint the people around me as much. Maybe I'll discover that it isn't so bad and I'll dedicate the next 3 years to something that feels more substantial? That makes my degree more worth it? 

Maybe law, engineering, computing, science, math, business people are all meant for great things and I can get some semblance of that by picking the less obscure modules from FASS...?

Call me naive, because it will sound better than the awkward silence before somebody asks if I want to be a teacher, or that sigh of disappointment when they ask why I went to FASS in the first place. 

So, what's next? Do I know what I want? What am I doing?

If everything goes well, I may be taking a major in Theatre Studies, and a multidisciplinary minor in English Studies. 

English studies will help me group my excess modules into something useful, and allow me to take film modules as well as lit modules without the pressure of having to do period texts (mandatory 18th-20th century texts)... And Theatre... I guess I should have seen it coming eh? I don't suppose NUS is the best place for Theatre, to be honest, but I guess it depends on what aspects you value. If I had enough guts for the glory of course I would train professionally elsewhere in art school locally or overseas... but here I am, perhaps marrying degree worth with passion and spontaneity in circumstances that are neither good nor bad in nature, but just are. 

Some of my friends see me as "reverting" back, but perhaps they haven't seen me walk the whole stretch. This isn't "reverting", it's coming full circle. It's being armed with the knowledge that I will learn wherever I go, and being welcomed to a fertile ground for my interests to grow; where the arts, literature, film collide with learning about society too. 

I've been oscillating between Sociology and Theatre for a while now. I still don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how this will help me get to where I want to go, or if I have a destination in the first place. I'm still not at peace with my decision, and I may never be (we all suffer from the Greener Grass Syndrome, no biggie). But I guess I'm learning. To take things in my stride, to be at peace with myself, my capabilities and the knowledge that at this stage of privileged education, in a world that is starting to look just slightly more forgiving than before... I may be alright after all.