i can't help thinking i messed up, messed up, messed up.

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death

John Keats

is it wrong to hold out for someone who is right for you as opposed to someone to whom no serious fault could be found?

"Perhaps I have somehow thought that in doing so, I would come to despise in him what I should have admired and that he would have shrank from the qualities in me that he should have relished. I would spend my life hiding away parts of myself and he would never know or maybe even care."

I kind of spaced out during dr. kammen's class today because these thoughts kept intruding. Which was odd because its currently my favourite class.  Its like I am too tired to put my mental filters up.

Since things turned out so well for all parties concerned, there is no reason to dwell on the past, no reason to feel guilty. Still, sometimes I deplore the bad, coincidental timing - if I had enrolled just one semester earlier or later, if I had chosen to study Thailand over Indonesia - i wouldn't be confronting choices I made in the past and how thinking about how it may still apply today.

These times, I just want to shut the door on everyone and never come out.

The biggest difference between the science and arts faculty is how much we have to talk. I was amused to note, in a recent conversation with colleagues who pursued applied physics and computer engineering respectively at postgraduate level, that they find being back in school a relief. Its a relief, because you can sit back and watch someone else do the teaching, copy down notes (and/or fall asleep) just like our students do, instead of being the one in the spotlight. That was pretty much what I did in my undergrad maths modules too. I don't think I know or talked to a single professor in the mathematics department with the possible exception of my honours project supervisor. Possible exception because I can't recall a single conversation when I knew what he was talking about.

I don't recall meaningful discussions with my classmates either, even at honours level.  Half the time was spent gaping at some brilliant soul who knew how to solve everything and the other half - a lot of people were talking in chinese. It might not be the politically correct thing to say, but I felt, quite strongly in my undergrad years, alienated from people in my course, partly because of race. Most of the professors are Chinese, many from China or Hongkong, exchange students were from China, casual conversations tend to be in Chinese. During lectures, one could see the racial demarcations - a single row of Malay/Muslim female students attending the lectures, and the group of us tend to band together. There were exceptions - eg. very friendly PSC scholars and the class valedictorian who spent one semester sitting next to me, talking rubbish about anything but maths. But I remember those moments because they were not ordinary. Most of the time, I can get through lessons all week with just exchanging brief hellos and not a single thing else.

In secondary school or JC, I don't make friends along racial lines and it astonished me, even now, I felt the segregation most at an institution where we were supposed to be at the pinnacle of educational success. Then again. I was the only malay/muslim girl in honours year and perhaps, because of that I was preoccupied by alienness. I was, for a time, resentful of a professor who suggested casually (as he bent over a problem I failed to solve) that I do not pursue honours in pure mathematics, even though my grades qualified because he didn't think I had the aptitude. (In a way, he was right. I didn't)  Perhaps the isolation was self-imposed. Maybe it was all perception. 

I  was unconsciously expecting the same kind of academic isolation when I re-enrolled as a graduate student.  It became a bit of a shock to experience the level of engagement in the arts faculty. People say hi, and introduce themselves and you cannot just sit in a corner by yourself, hoping everyone would forget you exist. There is a wider variety of nationalities - some so far away geographically, I don't know why SEA even impinged on their consciousness. You are expected to contribute ideas, not answers and listen for different perspectives. You are judged on contributions that are subjective, that may or may not be sincere. The shift is both uncomfortable and comforting. I am beginning to realize how much I don't know and that not knowing may not be the best criteria in choosing what to study. Every reading and lesson, I feel that I am assembling tiny pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that is slowly taking shape. Unlike math which I approached in as a series of problems in a vacuum (not the best way, definitely, but a way I learnt to cope) now, I have come to sense an awareness of both the constituents as well as the whole.

I am exhilarated but terrified at the same time.