On becoming a Teacher

Tomorrow will be the start of a new journey.

It's my first step towards becoming a teacher. I feel...rather excited and at peace. What I'm expecting now is a highly predictable and routine period, doing something I immensely enjoy, and hopefully immersing myself in a new environment where I would meet new people, learn a few new things and gain some insights into the life of a typical teacher.

One of the things I did to signal the beginning of a new journey was to clear out from PGP. I painfully erased every single trace of me ever been there. My memory of the days spent there was rather fragmented, as I didn't feel I belonged there as most of the time I was distressed over the wrong choice of course. Well, one of the things I am NOT good at, or pathetically suck at, is to enjoy doing something I dislike. Sometimes I can be rather extreme and irrational, as in, looking at things from a rational or pragmatic perspective in a cool-headed way, I would just do it and press on for the sake of its objective merits. Unfortunately, I am not mature enough to master and practice that skill.

So I checked out of my hostel, and took the shuttle bus to tour around the campus for one final time, examining the little details of the place I had lived for the past 4 months, though half-heartedly. At 9 plus, the campus was quiet and tranquil, just as it was on the night I arrived.

I left just the way I came, just that this time with one or two new found knowledge of myself. To sum up, my short stint at NUS has made me more self-conscious, in a good way. I now know how unprepared I am for an independent university life. To be honest, I still feel that I cannot fully cope with uni, there are many questions I have yet to fathom and many shortcomings I have to deal with. The experience has revealed them, raw and conspicuous. They are screaming at my face, they are there, staring into me, trying to put me down every single day, but no, I'm not giving up. I need to press on, and fight the evils residing within me. NOW.

Bartley will be the first step. The first step is always the hardest to take, but I'm making a promise to myself, that I'll be proactive and be excited about the small things in my new life.