I am feeling apprehensive about this trip. It will be the first time I am going overseas for research; to date I have gone overseas for holidays and community service, but never for an academic purpose. There were many hiccups and challenges preparing for this trip.  For example, the organisations that my group and I tried to contact for interviews did not cooperate with us (read: non-replies to our emails).  That got my mind thinking paranoid: what if we cannot get enough data for our research? What if this ends up in a bad grade because our research was lacking?

It is perhaps the worry of every USP scholar – whether we will do well in everything NTU-related.  It is easy to quickly dismiss any focus on academic performance, given this great shift in perspective the government wants our desperate students (and parents) to have, but it is already there.  It is not so easy. We are called scholars for a reason – if we do not live up to the expectations placed on us by the professors, the school, society at large and even the world, we indict ourselves with failure, even though they do not.  Yet it can either cripple, or motivate us to do even better next time.  It’s definitely not a positive force, but it’s there and real.

The same attitude we take towards our studies and life in general, we take towards this trip.  This research paper on ecotourism in Vietnam – it must be written well.  When we land there, boots on ground, we start work on something that we are all unsure and fearful about.  Some of us may be excited, but I know my excitement is driven by my desire to pull this thing off beautifully.  Through the process I hope to see what ecotourism is from the eyes of the tourist and the guide: the local communities who strive to show us the untainted, rich culture and environs of Vietnam, hoping that we will see them for who and what they are, without the erosion of society or environment. My mind will be stretched, as it has been since day 1 in NTU’s curriculum.

Perhaps it is in this trip I tell myself that I will not be buried in books – that education is not about burial in books.  As much as we like to spout that incessantly as some high ideal, we will be living that ideal for seven days in a foreign land. Education is about broadening your mind, attempting to fit the world in till the day you take your last breath, and it will be uncomfortable. I tell myself I have come to NTU to learn, to acquire knowledge, to understand the world in its existence and purpose.  I think this trip will be worth it.