Article 1: Walking down memory lane

Reflection by Ibrahim

Hi there, I am Ibrahim, a year 2 Information Security student under School of Computing. Fun fact about me is I have never bought my own bubble tea - I clearly cannot justify paying so much money for them but you can always buy me one hehe 😉

A bit about me first. I guess I am the only non-freshie here haha 🙈. I was from polytechnic and consequently my National Service ended after I started school in Semester 1 so I missed orientation and other activities such as Batch Project last year. I was rather clueless and friendless when I started school - not staying on campus and taking only the University Scholars' Seminar (USS) on zoom exacerbated matters. With all my lessons being online and not meeting anyone from USP in my course, I only had 1 friend through-

out my 1st semester and it felt very miserable, as I was a people's person who loves constant interaction. The only interactions I had with my friend were academic related (doing the assignments given to us) and I felt very lonely. What made it worse was my parents constantly nagging at me to study and do well in university - both were working at home and were in some sense, micromanaging me. They expected me to help out in cooking at home and manage my time to study. Any time I took a break from studying was a chance for them to command me to do kitchen staff duties. It was hard to even meet anyone as my parents constantly brought out the winning card of "No going out unnecessarily because you might get Covid-19", to which I had lost any form of courage to rebut and I resigned to my fate of house arrest.

The constant fear of rebuttal and disappointing others engulfed me and I started doubting myself. My modules were not going great either and I easily found myself struggling in my programming and math modules, some of which I took alone. What an experience taking the modules. I was so scared to even take my math test at all because I couldn't do any question and I had to request my friend senior from Junior College (JC) to help out. I was in full despair and my body started shaking when I encountered assessments. The amount of panic attacks I faced were frequent and it paralyzed me in other aspects of my life and the sheer fact that I couldn't do anything correctly resulted in me losing hope in myself and I was not good enough to be in University and in the University Scholars' Programme (USP).

The negative affirmations manifested in all aspects of my life - family, friends and even USP modules. I doubted myself being with my USS team as I felt uneducated enough to be around such high achievers simply by seeing them use more sophisticated words. I failed to realize that they would definitely be better having done General Paper in JC. My relationship with my family deteriorated and I started to despise them and misconstruing whatever they say.

As such I set out to seek answers to why I turned out to be like this? I was fine before university started? What happened? I also joined "Find Your Ikigai Singapore" organized by former USP alumni that helped me gain clarity of my life. There, I was introduced to the book "Positive Intelligence Quotient" (PQ) which was really a life savior as I finally started understanding the struggles I was feeling, attributed to the idea of Saboteurs in our minds who are more negative than the wise Sage in our mind. Many things in the world made sense. I realized what were impeding quality relationships with my family and friends. More shockingly, I realized that the 1 friend I had was actually toxic and actually made me feel down about myself. Fast forward, I was less affected by him and the number of panic attacks have decreased even though I took the hardest Writing and Critical Thinking module: Sites of Tourism and did not score as well. I would have not have progressed thus far without the wisdom gained from the PQ book and the support of my best friends. If you would like to read the book do let me know, I have the pdf of the first 8 chapters.

To be honest, I did not know I would join Batch Project (BP) especially since I thought it was only open to freshmen. But since all my plans got cancelled due to Covid-19 and I happened to find out that BP was about mental health, something I am passionate about and can relate to, I enquired about it to my USP friend whom I thought was in BP. Turns out she was not part of BP but she helped me ask Xin Yi if Year 2s can join and next thing I knew, I am part of BP YAY!! I joined BP story blogging because I wanted to learn more about story blogging, video editing and to also meet new people :) I must say I am pretty intimidated by video editing and having to do a video in the next 15 days is definitely not within my comfort zone but I challenged myself to not shun away from things that are difficult but instead face them with an open mind.

I feel that more than learning about story blogging, I feel inspired to learn more about mental health, something of growing awareness and importance. As someone who has personally gone through episodes, I seek to be there for those who would need someone to talk to. The importance of friends, self-love and presence of a safe space is even more important with Covid-19 restricting physical meetups and everyone getting busier and distant. With that I hope to learn how to foster a mentally healthier community, starting from within USP. If you all are interested in Mental Health, do consider joining the interest group Love USP and follow them on Instagram at @love_usp.

Pro-tip for freshmen: Stay on campus if possible even if your lessons are online. I really helps to have a community serve as a pillar of support as we navigate the struggles of university life :) Don't be like me HAHA. See ya'll around campus next semester.