The NUS campus, with its series of imposing, grey, rectangular blocks is no architectural beauty. To me, it has always seemed to be the academic equivalent of the HDB flat. Practical, functional, resiliently-durable.

It is also a campus where one can get quite a workout, walking up and down flights of stairs trying to get from one lecture theatre to another.

There is no apparent romance in its setting.

On the surface, it seems the perfect place to bury oneself in the academic life, to burrow under tons of heavy reference books in the almost arctic temperatures of the lower reaches of the Central Library, to slog away for grades and just be done with it all in a few years. And it is way too easy to get lost within its maze of serpentine staircases and frigid lecture halls and to lose one’s zest for learning in the glare of fluorescent-lighted tutorial rooms.

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One of my favourite storybooks is The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein.

The themes of love and sacrifice are intrinsically intertwined in our lives and it helps to always reflect on where we are, where we've come from and where we are going.

This column is my 'journal' of sorts, to explore the intersection between the roots and wings of this life.

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Yet to do so, would be to miss the whole point of studying at NUS, for the true gift of a university education lies not so much in the actual paper qualifications we receive upon graduation but in the way we utilise this ‘playgound’ of sorts to discover more about the type of person we are, and who we hope to become.

I majored in English Literature (Hons.) and Mass Communication when I studied at the National University of Singapore (NUS) from 1992-1996.

For me, NUS was the first time that I truly felt the push to explore my musical gifts more seriously. The opportunity to be a part of a music ministry group and to perform in concerts for my fellow students during the Freshmen Orientation Camps spurred my yearning to learn more about how to develop and grow this gift of music I knew I had been given. I was also interning for a local record company Hype Records at that time and I fondly remember discovering a secret rooftop space at one of the buildings in the Arts and Social Science Faculty where I could just sit and write music for a local singer’s (Jessica Soo’s Paper Feelings) album in between lectures!

English Literature came alive for me at NUS. It was the first time in my academic life that I felt challenged to delve deeply into the layers of text, of sub-text, of metaphysical nuances explored within texts and to discover what I personally felt about these works of literature.

For me, there was a sense of freedom in this that I had not felt in my Junior College literature course. Unfortunately, studying literature at the ‘A’ levels felt to me like a series of literary regurgitations onto examination papers for the purpose of scoring grades good enough to qualify for a good university.

But at the university level, we were encouraged to explore our individual responses to the literature and to defend our interpretations and readings of the works. The more passionate we felt about the literary work, the better. It was a place to flex one’s wings and try to fly in the direction one felt most strongly about.

As for my other major, Mass Communication, I still remember one of the first things the lecturer wrote on that big whiteboard : “The Media is the Message” and “The Agenda-Setting Function of the Media”.

Before this, I had just assumed that everything that I read in the newspapers, or that I viewed on TV was true, was objective and for the betterment of the collective knowledge.

Suddenly, I felt as if I were looking beyond the veil of the puppet show, to see the hands that were controlling the puppet, and the strings that pulled and turned the puppet this way and that.

I started to see and realize that there are newspaper editors, photographers, journalists behind every story and that what ends up on the front page of the papers, and thus sets the agenda for what people talk about and regard as important, was not so much the objective importance or relevance of the news, as much as it was a judgement call by the news editor as to what news should be the most visible.

In turn, the news editor’s judgement on what constituited ‘newsworthiness’ could be influenced by any number of subjective values, such as needing to be in the good books of certain big account advertisers, or needing to have a sensational story to sell papers, or perhaps having the unspoken desire to further one’s personal agenda, be it political, religious, cultural or any other ideology. Even the way in which the news was being delivered, be it with huge graphics on television, or via a flimsy flyer, could lend meaning to the news and to its presumed importance.

Suddenly, the world did not seem that black and white anymore.

And I relished that fact that my presumptions were being challenged, and that my academic brain was being stretched.

NUS was also a time for cultivating friendships. There was a lot of time spent together with classmates, to study together, go for lunch together, attend mass together and even go for retreats together.

My closest bunch of friends and I used to study in what was called the RBR room, (short for recommended books/reading room) and during the long study periods, we would go for lunch together, then dinner, then late night supper at the 24 hour nasi lemak institution, Fong Seng.

I have fond memories of this same group of friends helping me out in the wee hours of the morning that my honours thesis was due. I had shockingly many pages left to edit and print and I was majorly panicking.

When they heard I was in trouble, a couple of them came over to my house at 3 o’clock in the morning to help me proof-read and print my thesis, and thankfully, with the quick book-binding (although super expensive) services from a shop in Queenstown Shopping Centre, I just barely made the 1 p.m deadline for my thesis : “Sensual pleasure in Shakespearean Film”.

After this, far from pleasurable experience, I knew that I was never ever going to attempt to write another academic thesis!

It’s during stressful, agonizing times like these that the crucible of life tests the mettle of one’s friends and proves the worth of those who stand by you in tough situations.

Even though we’ve graduated from NUS for some 20 over years now, I still meet with these friends from time to time over late night kopi and prata and they have become some of my closest friends.

I have not been back to visit the campus of NUS for quite some time now, but perhaps I should do so soon, just to relive the blush of young adulthood, to trace the path along which I’ve journeyed thus far and perhaps to get some of that yummy Nasi Lemak from Fong Seng.

Top photo from Flickr.

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