Where In The World Is SuperMichelle, Singapore?
It occurred to me that for those who don’t know me personally and are wondering what’s going on and why I seem so damn depressed all the time these days, I should probably give a more precise explanation of what I’m doing now than the vague references I’ve been making.
I am doing a Graduate Diploma in Singapore Law at the National University of Singapore. It’s a conversion course for people who studied law in England. I’m also studying for exams for the Masters course I was on this past academic year. As can be expected, the overlap between the two courses is somewhat stressful right now.
I feel incredibly tired today. I walked through NUS (National University of Singapore) feeling like a complete alien. Attended the first class for one of my diploma courses, gave a stunningly mediocre performance in a presentation I was required to do, left feeling awkward and self-conscious for the first time in years.
On the way home in the bus there was a TV show (yes, we have TVs in buses) about Singaporean university students at home and abroad. One was a medical student in UCL. I watched as she showed the camera crew around the main quadrangle, through the cloisters, in the library, outside the Union, past so much that was familiar and beloved to me. My insides were churning with envy. I’m not used to having to deal with re-adjustment blues. I lived four years in London without a single pang of homesickness. Now I’m “home” the homesickness is killing me.
I’m sorry about all this whining – it isn’t what you come here to read, and it isn’t what I put up this site to write. I know I should and can get over this. SuperMichelle can pass the Masters exams. SuperMichelle can combine the Masters exams with the diploma course. SuperMichelle can redeem herself from today’s lousy performance in the moot course and make it into one of the international moot teams. SuperMichelle will balance keeping in touch with the people she loves in England (and Ireland), with catching up with the people she loves here, with making new friends in the new course. SuperMichelle will ignore the fact that in Singapore she looks and feels ten times worse than she does in England, because of how the humidity screws up her eyes, hair and skin. SuperMichelle will triumph.
I just have to bloody find where she’s hiding.