Reflections of my 2013

One of the most frustrating things about time is that it follows the Law of Relativity (closely related to those two theories Einstein proposed). What was a day could feel like months, and what were months could feel like a split second. As 2013 closes its curtains permanently, I am left with the feeling that it ended too soon but also with the memory that it couldn’t have gone slower.

My 2013 was split into two nearly equal chunks of time: the first seven months where I spent my holiday in my Ma’s hometown of Malacca, and the last five months reading Psychology in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

The first “half” of time was my “reward” for completing my A Levels, one of the most trying periods of my life. I came out of the exam hall determined to not waste my seven months of Sabbatical. I had a list of ‘productive’ things that I wanted to tackle, one of the more prominent being getting some semblance of a job.

I was extremely lucky, my aunt and uncle from my Ma’s side are teachers, and thus they know people who are in need of a tutor with a cheap rate. They themselves needed a tutor for their son (my cousin). I was reasonably confident with my abilities in teaching, but it was the first time I taught complete strangers.

Even so, the tutoring job was perfect for me. It wasn’t a huge siphon of my time, which meant I could block off time for other more personal projects I wanted to accomplish. I am a curious brat, which meant that I wanted to learn a huge number of things: songwriting, art, computer programming… Nothing could escape my curiosity. There was even a period of time when I planned to get into embroidery.

At the same time, I got myself a copy of Startcraft II, and promised myself that I was going to learn more about decision-making, planning, and management form the game. I also aimed to do the same thing with books: I bought, rediscovered, and downloaded a library of new books to read, determined to learn something from each and everyone of those pages of words.

You can already see the problem with my ambition; seven months might seem like a long time, but when you’re actually going through the process of doing those things on the checklist, you’ll find that you wouldn’t be able to complete half of those things even if you had seven years.

One by one, my attempts at carrying out the projects began to fall apart. There were several reasons, both external and internal. The most shameful reason was internal: I did not consciously go through the actual process of learning -I simply did, with little thought about what I was accomplishing, whether I was doing it correctly, or why I carried out the task at all. I began to lose sight of goals, and eventually, all of my efforts were half-assed and the results were sub-optimal.

Having said all of that, would I say that I had wasted my time? This is where I am most conflicted with my answer. On one hand, you could say that I learned little to nothing from my seven-month sabbatical, pre-August me would be inclined to agree with you. However, having gone the second half of 2013, I discovered that I did learn many valuable things. Half-learned skills are still skills, and they have been incredibly useful as tools for work, as well as the foundation to continue mastering these skills in the future. But more importantly, those projects kept me mentally sharp, ready for the next half of the year when I finally enter in the foray of Higher Education.

When I entered NTU and started taking my first steps into reading Psychology, I quickly discovered that there was one skill that was crucial for actually understanding the things that were being taught: Inquisition, the ability to barrage your experiences and knowledge with question after question. A lot of the lessons were designed to inspire that ability. I went for many a lecture and came out with more questions than answers, feeling inspired to read up more about them. Prof. Douglas made me nervous about his lectures when he introduced himself as a “Scientist that doesn’t agree with evolution”, but he quickly showed me that being cynical and skeptical of his ability to teach Psychology because of this would leave you poorer.

I once thought that skepticism was a good attitude to adopt. After all, it felt like it was the amalgamation of the best bits of Sarcasm, Cynicism and Critical Thinking. Now that 2013 is done, I’ve changed my mind on that issue: Being skeptical is definitely something that I do not want to be. My time spent on those failed projects and starting my education on Psychology taught me that curiosity definitely rewards you, as long as you couple it with an eager mind and even more eager heart.

And that, for me, is the biggest takeaway from my experiences for 2013: Don’t be Skeptical; be Curious, be Inquisitive, be Hopeful.

Happy New Year, everyone.