Sylvia’s Pre-Trip Reflections

This freshman overseas trip was what first caught my eye when NTU University Scholars Programme was introduced to me. The subsequent acceptance into the programme only builds up the anticipation for this trip. This trip will offer great insights and rare learning opportunities for us scholars. Through this trip and a possible future overseas exchange, I hope to develop a global perspective that I can internalise with my own thinking, identity and social responsibility to better play my part as a scholar from NTU.

Initially, I was greatly intrigued by the mere prospect of intercultural study exchange, especially with an exotic, cultured and historic country like Thailand. Similar to most Singaporeans, I have visited Thailand’s capital, Bangkok for a leisure shopping trip but a study trip to Thailand is definitely uncommon. Not only will I be able to understand better the basic cultural differences between Singapore and Thailand, I will also be able to appreciate the workings of Thai’s education and healthcare system. Having studied only in Singapore, this exposure would allow me to take on another perspective on our own education and related social issues.
Now left with only a couple of days till the trip, I look forward to the trip with much more expectations. I hope to gain much groundwork experiences, especially in a foreign land. These experiences are valuable, not only because of their rarity, but also because of their practicality. Conducting a research trip overseas, especially with a language barrier, would greatly train my interpersonal and organisational skills and ability to internalise overwhelming amount of raw data. This would definitely help in my future research work.

Furthermore, this trip will provide me with many areas to hone my critical thinking skills and intellect, as I travel with my fellow scholars and professors from NTU to visit representatives from Chiang Mai University. Furthermore, our group is honoured to have a panel discussion with the Nursing faculty of CMU on issues of smoking. This would broaden my perspective on healthcare issues, something that I always have an interest in.

On a more personal level, I am deeply curious about the smoking issue in Thailand that my group is researching on. Growing up in Singapore has taught me that smoking is quite a taboo for majority and primal impression of Thailand suggests that smoking is more socially acceptable there. Thus, I hope to understand how and why is this attitude different in Thailand. However, through our data collection, it could also be revealed to be not very much different from our attitudes as our impression of smoking in Thailand could be exaggerated by the Internet or our own biases.

Furthermore, I am secretly excited with conducting our own street surveys and observational studies. Having studied about the analysis of survey data in psychology and the use of observations to study others’ behaviour, it is thrilling to put theories learnt into real world application. In the context where we do not understand the language they are speaking, their actions do speak louder than words. We learnt that sociocultural factors play significant role in shaping one’s behaviour and this trip definitely puts this theory on a test during our social observations.

I am positive that this trip will be unlike others.