Last...

I have been meaning to write this entry for days, but there is just so much to do in between that it makes me want to sigh many times over. It has been a rather pensieve week to a large degreee, since there are many ``lasts'' that happen this week.

It is the last week of the StuCo I am teaching this semester, namely ``Introduction to Traditional Chinese Music''.

It is the last week of my undergraduate classes.

It is among the last times that I get to hang around campus.

How strangely does time fly. It has been about 3 years since I first stepped foot off Singapore and ended up here in the US, in Carnegie Mellon. I recall many memories from that time, both good and bad. Fresh out of National Service, head swooning from the almost zealous interactions with a horde of new people, I was a much different person then, perhaps a little more naïve, a little more ``pure'' than who I am now. I believed in so much more then, in life, in relationships and in career. Burnt on many fronts based on what I once believed in, I find that as time went on, my entire belief system was systematically deconstructed and rebuilt as my undergraduate career progressed. Now I believe in far, far less than before, ever more skeptical about human nature, ever more wary about things in general.

Sometimes I ask myself, have I strayed from my ``goody-two shoes'' role that I was playing for quite a long while. And as time wore on, I find that my answer became more and more complicated. As a psychologist might put it, I am in the process of rediscovering who I really am, and as a part of that rediscovery, some of the old values have morphed into different ones now. Perhaps I am even more ``unfitting'' with the culture back at Singapore, having been exposed to much more liberal values over here than before. Perhaps the mere fact that I get to make my own decisions here is sufficient to convert me from a purely conservative viewpoint to one that is more liberal in nature. Don't get me wrong, I am still somewhat conservative at heart, but that social conservatism has much of its irrational factors weathered away by the constant exposure to the liberal aspect of life.

So what next? Work first, and then other things will fall into place, I guess.

It feels good to have some control over your life.