I received a letter from the University of San Diego a week ago telling me that the school has “extra-long beds for your convenience,” and another letter from Residence Hall Linens with different assortments of sheets, comforters and such to pick from.
That was when it suddenly hit me: I am leaving Singapore to study in an entirely different continent.
Before that, I was totally immersed in the joy and excitement of pursuing my studies in a country that gave the world fast food and Britney Spears (translation: the good and the bad).
I was looking forward to participating in Cultural Night events at USD and making new friends. I was totally preoccupied with frivolous concerns and did not take notice of the anxiety that was creeping up to me.
All my life, I have been taken care of, and now, I have to leave. I started to identify certain fears I have about going abroad.
For starters, there is the homesickness issue. What if I cannot get used to the West Coast lifestyle and miss Singapore excessively? I started to take notice of the details around me: the cosy/messy way my room is, the threatening yet endearing way my mom yells, and that stain on the wallpaper from when my sister and I had a food fight. The more I remember, the more I want to remain in this circle of comfort.
Thinking about leaving the people and things I have known all these years just rips me up. Fortunately, my buddies all try to cheer me up. One of them tells me that studying abroad will provide memories that I’ll never forget.
But there will also be challenges to overcome, I say. Not the least of which, managing my finances on a tight budget. My friend tries to rationalise with me, telling me that it was my choice in the first place to pursue my tertiary education in the U.S.A. I immediately feel that I was being such a cow. Instead of doing something practical to counter my fears, I dwelled in them and let them take me over. How silly!
So instead, I started to live up my life by going out with friends and discovering new coffee joints and eateries. At the same time, I’m trying to familiarise myself with the USD campus map, check out the university’s Web site and learn with what I will be dealing once I move in. I also now keep a notebook in which I take note of what to bring and pack to the States.
However, at the end of the day, my focus is still on spending as much time with my family as possible. My parents had always cared so much about me; sending me abroad must be very painful for them. To grapple as much time with them as possible, I caddied for my mother during her 18-hole golf game and sat at the owner’s box with my father to watch his “baby,” a handsome stallion called Inter City, race for the annual cup.
Studying abroad has a myriad of once-in-a-lifetime benefits. It will allow me to discover the differences and the many similarities between my world and that of my brand-new schoolmates in the U.S.A. I feel genuinely blessed that I have the opportunity to go abroad to further my studies. More importantly, I am thankful that I have many people back home that support me and love me dearly. I will most definitely try my best at USD.
Look for Joyce Chan’s dispatches from San Diego in every edition of The Next Step Magazine this school year!
