Lloyd Heng Qi Hao
BSocSc Class of 2017
The signature campanile that welcomes you when you take your first step into the college. Legend has it that anyone who steps under the bell tower before exams will be doomed to fail them (P.S. It is not true!)
Planting your boots into the pebbled paths lining the courtyard of the campus, you fill your lungs with a mixture of sub-zero gases, let the cold air paradoxically warm your insides, and finally expunge them with a wide grin on your face.
“Welcome to Dublin, you lucky boy,”
“I know, right?”
You have the first of many rhetorical conversations with yourself, and brace yourself to continue taking on half of your weight’s worth of baggage to this tiny shelter that is your home for the next months. Thank God it is on the second floor, not the fourth. At least getting them down the steps will be less effortful.
(Fast Forward to Four Months Later)
I was wrong. The scale at the airport registered 50 kilograms shared between 2 suitcases and an on-board duffel.
“Welcome back home, Lloyd.”
“Sigh. But hallelujah, there is finally Milo and proper curry!”
For many of us, student exchange is the highlight of university life. In many ways, it is — It is an emulation of independent life, especially so if you intend to pursue postgraduate studies. It is when strangers become friends. You go on liberating solo adventures and finally attempt to make the socially awkward penguin become less awkward of a being.
It is when you see things you otherwise wouldn’t have in the tiny tropical land we call Singapore. As a retired SOSCIETY Welfare Director, this means hating yourself after seeing all the possible ideas that you could have come up with for SOSS students — A puppy room to chase the exam blues away, having regular drag-clad, or just plain ol’, lip-sync battles at the college lounge/bar where students down liquid black gold like it is water (at 2 Euros a pint, it is arguably as affordable), or having student-led activities and booths near the central campanile recognising and celebrating diversity and bringing awareness to the things that should matter more, at least to the Irish — mental health, LGBTQ+ rights (they call it Rainbow Week, how cool is that?), or to repeal the pro-life abortion laws.
There is so much more I could have done. I blame my lack of creativity and wish I had gone on an exchange sooner. At least I have completed a Psychology elective on Creativity while on exchange and I should be much better at synthesising radical plans now.
Radical plans include baking mind-controlling cake for your housemates
Modules on exchange are a godsend, especially if you value a comprehensive education. I took the opportunity to take a couple of social science modules that were not offered at SOSS. As a Sociology major, I believe that rudimentary exposure to certain sociological constructs is mandatory. And so, many thanks to Trinity College for having me in their two sociology courses on Race and Migration, as well as the Creative Thinking and Innovation course that I cleared under the Technology and Entrepreneurship cluster (Amen to that). My advice is for all to do their background research proper, for some exchange partners require students to complete primarily business modules, and where is the fun in that if you happen to be majoring in Sociology and Psychology?
Another piece of advice is to be open to change. Any change. That means living for months on end, quite possibly in the cold depending on where you are heading, away from your immediate network of kin and peers. It also means you have to plan out your meals and laundry cycles, more so if you are cooking, which you should be doing because a meal out costs upwards of 10 Euros. It means having to share a kitchen with others who never do their dishes until the next morning, or the next one after that, if at all. It means sorting your trash and keeping track of your budget and expenses. It means keeping only one small jar of Nutella in your room and not three because that’s going to make you fat (at one point I did have three).
Changes are inconvenient, but it is part of what growing up, or rather old, means. One day, you will either live alone or have a family, and being accustomed to life independent of our parents or domestic worker doing everything for us will be a plus when that eventually happens.
Change also means self-awareness and self-exploration. In the process of change you realise some are harder to commit. The cooking and laundry are the easy parts, making the decision to be involved as the only foreign student in a CCA or heading out to a bar alone, with near-zero temperatures out, and everyone so friendly and loud are a feat for any skilled introvert. Yet it is precisely the difficult changes that are the most rewarding, for you become aware of what is holding you back and how nonsensical it is to be holding you back in the first place. Just take a leap of faith, and be rewarded… and if not, you learn what you ought not to jump for.
For many of us, this is the first true chance we get at being truly alone. For some it comes with that queasy feeling of longing for home (or pets), but while there were such moments of vulnerability, it is important to feel the empowerment being alone entails.
Being alone means you can do whatever you want, without impunity of course. Please don’t be the annoying housemate that screams Les Miserable at midnight, or the one that ingests ethanol beyond their threshold and end up spewing stomach content everywhere. Or not washing your dishes.
That said, please do attempt most if not all things alone at least once. Investing yourself in a good read at a cafe over a macchiato, bar-hopping and accidentally landing yourself in a gay bar that has the friendliest crowd ever (and you don’t even have to be queer), or travelling the region without compromise — no more heading to boring museums and yes please to all the concerts, food, and sceneries at your own pace and budget.
You literally and figuratively see the world while travelling. You understand the struggles Athenians face in post-bailout Greece and their attitudes towards the refugees (and Chinese capitalists taking over their enterprises and land). You fall in love with the British accent all over again and attempt at it while chatting up the locals about the referendum. You see for yourself what the other Europeans mean by ‘robotic and rude’ Germans but brush it off as a stereotype, because you remember what you learnt in Sociology. You visit the recovering Spain, become mesmerised by the cityscape and people who don’t even speak your language (getting food was a miming nightmare). On occasion, you go somewhere just to live the high-life, somewhere like Santorini.
Oia, Santorini
The list goes on, and personally, it is important for the list to extend as far down as possible for most of my self-expansionary learning comes from such solo adventures. You learn the theories of migration and racism in class, but it is in the real world that they really make immediate sense.
Ultimately, you evolve to become a dual-citizen if not a global citizen, for though I don’t even watch or get football as a sport, I was immensely proud of the Republic when they won the match against whoever that other team was, and take solidarity in the videos of polite Irish fans fixing cars and singing to infants.
Other SOSCIETY members in the region indulging in the all-green craic over St. Patrick’s Day in Dublin #greenpride
Much missed, and with much love, thank you Trinity College (and SMU for making it possible)!