rivers and roads
it has been an unexpectedly good day
mm on a side note though...change makes me emotional, and finding this new chemistry tution teacher a good fit for me now makes me relieved but causes me to miss my old biology / chemistry tuition teacher really, really badly. i was so lucky to have had him teach me - a tutor who stayed overtime for virtually all my lessons to go through as much as he could afford, a tutor who would laugh with / at me and ask me about school and where i wanted to go from where i was in life. it sounds really stupid to get all emotionally attached to a tuition teacher, considering their ultimate function and considering that students are generally just not this hung up over teachers, but he was a really great friend and supporter through some of the hardest months of secondary school, and his dedication and effective teaching gave me great security and joy for two subjects that made eoys that much easier to get through. the appreciation he taught me to have for biology in particular is what made me think i would be fine with jc biology despite all the horrid things i'd heard about the syllabus. it is so difficult to find someone who gives you that much comfort and teaches you to have that much joy for a subject, and even harder to let the person go.
this new tuition teacher is good, but there is very little emotion and reaching out with him, and to realize that this emotionless persistence is now the teacher that suits you instead of the warm, friendly guidance of old is something that hits me pretty hard. i've hated what this system does for the longest time, and that it is a reason for me to give up all that to make sure i get good grades makes me feel like crying for a while.
regardless, i am thankful for the good buzz of today. there's been an absence of days like this one, and this one has been amazingly good to me. we will press on, and we will learn accept the things that so pain us presently.
there's also this though:
it's beginning to sink in (really early) that one day i will not be sharing a bench with 13S77 any more. i will not be able to sit there in the mornings, dazed and possibly depressed but sitting there, people-watching and looking out at the space of the central plaza. i will have little chance to be with the entirety of my class, and i will not be able to walk around a place so familiar and so....mine, in many ways. i will not have a familiar group of peers my age to hang around with any more. fellow students in a batch or even a few consecutive batches may not understand one another, but there is comfort in knowing that all these people understand to a good extent, what you are going through, and a smaller but still substantial number can connect with the pain and sadness but also joy you feel on a regular basis in the sense that they experience the same things. i will miss all of this, despite all the resentment, exhaustion and desire to escape that i've been feeling.
A year from now we'll all be gone
All our friends will move away
And they're going to better places
But our friends will be gone away
Rivers and roads
Rivers and roads
Rivers 'til I reach you
- the buzz i woke with sustained for almost the whole day
- light-hearted and giggly lunch with fok and giogi
- i slept on the bus home but didn't miss my stop
- my new chemistry tutor is a good fit, which is a huge relief
- even gp comprehension felt particularly manageable today; i feel i am improving
- joshua ip's poetry is not my cup of tea but he was a really, really fun speaker with a certain stability and ease / self-confidence that i really admire - he is now another memory i will look to for strength
mm on a side note though...change makes me emotional, and finding this new chemistry tution teacher a good fit for me now makes me relieved but causes me to miss my old biology / chemistry tuition teacher really, really badly. i was so lucky to have had him teach me - a tutor who stayed overtime for virtually all my lessons to go through as much as he could afford, a tutor who would laugh with / at me and ask me about school and where i wanted to go from where i was in life. it sounds really stupid to get all emotionally attached to a tuition teacher, considering their ultimate function and considering that students are generally just not this hung up over teachers, but he was a really great friend and supporter through some of the hardest months of secondary school, and his dedication and effective teaching gave me great security and joy for two subjects that made eoys that much easier to get through. the appreciation he taught me to have for biology in particular is what made me think i would be fine with jc biology despite all the horrid things i'd heard about the syllabus. it is so difficult to find someone who gives you that much comfort and teaches you to have that much joy for a subject, and even harder to let the person go.
this new tuition teacher is good, but there is very little emotion and reaching out with him, and to realize that this emotionless persistence is now the teacher that suits you instead of the warm, friendly guidance of old is something that hits me pretty hard. i've hated what this system does for the longest time, and that it is a reason for me to give up all that to make sure i get good grades makes me feel like crying for a while.
regardless, i am thankful for the good buzz of today. there's been an absence of days like this one, and this one has been amazingly good to me. we will press on, and we will learn accept the things that so pain us presently.
there's also this though:
it's beginning to sink in (really early) that one day i will not be sharing a bench with 13S77 any more. i will not be able to sit there in the mornings, dazed and possibly depressed but sitting there, people-watching and looking out at the space of the central plaza. i will have little chance to be with the entirety of my class, and i will not be able to walk around a place so familiar and so....mine, in many ways. i will not have a familiar group of peers my age to hang around with any more. fellow students in a batch or even a few consecutive batches may not understand one another, but there is comfort in knowing that all these people understand to a good extent, what you are going through, and a smaller but still substantial number can connect with the pain and sadness but also joy you feel on a regular basis in the sense that they experience the same things. i will miss all of this, despite all the resentment, exhaustion and desire to escape that i've been feeling.
Click to viewA year from now we'll all be gone
All our friends will move away
And they're going to better places
But our friends will be gone away
Rivers and roads
Rivers and roads
Rivers 'til I reach you