This semester is thus far more most enjoyable learning semester, although it is much blighted by the heavy disappointment of not being able to help the community through a means that I feel so strongly about: art therapy for mental well-being.
I do wish that I had made many different choices and decisions. For some reason, I never was one to have regrets, but the university experience has been quite full of them. Many of them stem from an attempt to follow logical reasoning instead of listening to my heart - and they just don't work out. Some decisions have a snowball effect - and who knows how I might be like now if I had taken different courses, gone to Germany for exchange, and etc? It is still a process to take the regrets in a positive light even though I am able to see the silver linings - the 'what-ifs' still being processed before eradication.
Another realisation - not sure if it took the past 4 years to reach this conclusion - is that having time and validity to go through an organic internalizing process is very important for me. To not have external factors pushing for a quick analysis and conclusion (logical reasoning and deadlines), nor to have pressure both internal and external to feel or think a certain way about something. For example, certain actions and behaviour I can understand to be better for me and for others, but it will take some while before it becomes adopted and part of myself, as to be part of my natural behaviour, and part of my belief and value system, it has to be internalised, processed and assimilated into self.
The same goes towards writing and creating work. I have a tendency to get too excited at the end product or by ideas, and my thoughts skip a process flow that confounds things and leaves me going in smaller spirals. I suppose writing in many aspects is the best representation of the product and also the solution: it flows best with clarity of thought, and this clarity of thought is aided and developed through writing. Along the years I stopped writing - after writing profusely every day as essential and integral as breathing, and sometimes even more than sleeping and eating - and as a result the thoughts only swirl around in my head without clear processing, and numerous distractions (admittedly, I sought much of them in a bid to find answers and a direction, or on the surface level to quash, swallow, drown them out) only served to impede proper processing. The thoughts can't disappear because I care about them, and can't be processed because I didn't allow them too, and became many lost whirlpools in my mind, and I became increasingly lost and confused, floating aimless in the eye of the tornado.
I guess that's why this academic semester is so significant as well, as I take the classes I am genuinely interested in but for some reason just was too blind/stupid, and perhaps afraid, to take. The three courses pushes me and I react to them similarly, taking on the challenges in a desire to do better than is not marred by lethargy that I associate with the lack of passion. The only hurdle then, is me, and more specifically my epic procrastinating and lack of urgency for deadlines...
221:
Newswriting is largely directed by Hedwig, who is smart, witty, an "iron lady" but with fair judgment and sincerity to whip us into good news writers. Her classes are a good wake-up call in the morning that intellectually stimulates and clears away muddier dreams and residue thoughts. Reading the papers become much more enjoyable when I take note of the writing rather than just the issues (freak editing tendencies within me), for I guess I'm naturally not very concerned about political issues and the like - "news". I'd be quite happy in a cave not knowing what is happening around me actually, but perhaps this may change, or is changing as I learn more about it. It's really fun so far to notice how the lead is written, how even a punctuation or word changes so much, and etc, and to write leads and all in class, but I remember how agonising structured essays were, and in some sense still is...but they will be challenges I will enjoy.
One thing that struck me about it is that newswriting is very much the humanizing of issues. News is written for people, and even the aim of hard news is to communicate clearly the issues by making it understandable, relatable and interesting. Different issues can be distant to different people - political happenings, global stuff, ongoing issues (environmental, etc) that lack newsiness but are often even more important - and it is the way they are written and communicated that will get people interested in them.
424:
Scriptwriting: a wholly new experience, new way to tell stories, new structures, new things to learn about the differences between being the viewer, the director, the writer and more in a film. The lecturer is morose and adorable, cynical from working for two decades in Mediacorp yet it feels like he just can not stop creating stories no matter how cynical he has gotten, can't stop writing, and he looks like the old man in Up, with flyaway hair and smaller rectangular glasses he often takes out to ponder over points. He's the kind of lecturer that will forget about the rest of the class while thinking seriously over a student's question, and how to continue explaining a point he has introduced (a point where a lot other lecturers will just skip). I like him. The tutorials get quite boring sometimes with only three students - myself included - but story-telling...I hesitate to say it, but it helps to push, to chip away at the years of writer's block.
224:
Photojournalism is yet another way of story-telling that is intricately linked to journalism, although with kc it has largely taken on a much more modern form. Think Instagram, concept-based photography as compared to "harder" photographs. A very new field here, especially co-taken with journalism..usually I prefer photography that is largely based on aesthetics rather than telling a story, and I think I will work to fuse these two together; there is no reason why it can't work out.
So here it is. Pretty heavy actually, but heavy in a lovely, practical way, I have no textbooks this semester, although a lot of research studies to go through that are too impractical to print out although I'd love to be able to do so, and it's already nearing the mid-point. I'm breathing in August and it's already mid-September...
And so now I write - I have to work so much harder - and publish it where people can see it to gain some validity and a form of responsibility to myself to not be lazy and well, keep writing. Don't mind me...