Dawn of the Final Term

Tomorrow marks the start of a new term, and a busy week.

6 weeks of holiday, just vanished before my eyes!

Managed to accomplish a few things during this hols, though. Sorted out the problems that has been bothering me, so that the next few years here might be better than this year; and managed to thoroughly enjoy, and destress myself at Word Alive, and the Sweden trip.

Also managed to find people to work with the for 4 days during the past week. That served to relief me of much of the feeling of stress and isolation of working alone, and helped me to progress in my revision really significantly, as compared with revising on my own. I really wonder if the course of my first year in Cambridge would have been drastically different had I just known someone whom I could turn to whenever I faced a problem. Thinking of all that time I had spent being so unproductive, makes me feel like I had wasted a whole year here. But on the bright side, now I would have something substancial to write in job/internship application forms, whenever they ask for "a difficult situation you were faced with and how you overcomed it". Guess God has a purpose in everything.

Also beginning to find comfort in just bumping into people whom I'm starting to grow familiar with over here. Cambridge is indeed that nice little town where you can make an evening visit to the grocery store, and bump into one of your friends, then leisurely stroll back to home with him, to meet more friends living with him. All that just happened tonight when I bumped into Shagnik outside Sains, and followed him back to fitz, to meet all the mathmos there! Some of them were cooking, and some were just making their way to the toilet. It's really nice to meet so many familiar people, and feel welcomed by everyone in the vicinity. How I wished I could be in a college with such an atmosphere, where you could casually hang out with so many good friends who are doing the same course, and do insignificant things together, like cooking.

While in Shagnik's room, chatted with him about the courses we'll be doing in the new term. Expressed my apprehension about facing another Cambridge term, and this time, actually having a measure of your performance, but was reminded that we could actually take the courses we'll be doing this term easy, because it won't be included in the exams. Guess that's what I'll do this term - attend the maths courses leisurely, and see if I actually can enjoy them if I weren't under pressure to understand them. That would allow me to determine if it was really maths, or if it was the pressure of understanding the lecture.

Also discussed about doing a postgrad in the US. I've been considering the course of my academic path recently, as I pondered my change of course. I thought that I really wouldn't want to go through the first year of an overseas transition again, if there was an option. Cos the whole process of knowing people and being understood by people is just so difficult. But Shagnik didn't see that as a problem. Guess it might be because he hadn't faced such a degree of difficulty coming over here. So overseas transition might not neccessarily be that difficult, and I was just perhaps unfortunate to land on the extreme end of the difficulty spectrum. This experience would help me to know what to look out for when I have to decide on the place I would want to go to further pursue my studies.

Ah, just logging today's topic of conversation. And I'm feeling a certain sense of calm, on the night before full term begins.