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Exciting Life Updates

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I know I haven’t been updating this blog because I’m too lazy. Years 2 and 3 have been an exciting flurry of business (both work and busy-ness). I constantly spew bite-sized thoughts that stream into my mind on Instagram Stories anyway, and I am remarkably easily bored and excitable, so longer, more considered pieces on Blogger aren’t sustainable. I digress. Many exciting life updates! I’m now officially done with my undergraduate PPE programme at King’s College London. I loved every bit of it: the depth, rigour and intellectual intensity of the course, the international student community, the bustling city of London and all the travel opportunities around Europe. Words can’t do justice to the profundity of the experience. In typical Quincean fashion, I milked everything I could out of the three years: went to Cumberland Lodge (for free) as a photographer with the Philosophy Department in Years 1 and 3, clinched the Principal’s Global Leadership Award (PGLA) in my second year (spending
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December 2020

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It’s finally over! Last Tuesday evening (8 December 2020), I completed my final Oxford interview — Politics. It was quite enjoyable. Two years ago on my first attempt, my Politics interview involved graphical data interpretation, so I expected something similar this time around. I was pleasantly surprised when it was a political theory discussion instead.

I think I did quite well in Economics and Politics — those interviews were peppered with many moments of enjoyment, wonder and discovery as I stumbled my way through the questions. I screwed up (hence my previous post) the first half of my Philosophy interview because I hadn’t adequately warmed up to translating natural language statements into symbolic logic, in which I think better for puzzles. I’m glad the other Philosophy tutor who took over for Part 2 of the interview sensed my anxiety and made me read through the next question slowly and aloud to confirm that I understood it properly before proceeding with the rest of the interview. Part 2 was so much better! It was about a prima facie bipartite definition of causation followed by some counterexamples which attacked the second part of the definition. With that done, now I can only wait for the results on 12 January 2021. Fingers crossed.

Since last Wednesday (upon my return to the office), I have been training my successor, Andre, on the job. He learns quite quickly. I keep laughing at him HAHAHAHAHA because he has been perpetually besieged with endless fires to put out all over the place. Oh, if only you saw his face when I told him that the only regularities were trivial and most of the job was handling special cases everywhere! He created a Word document titled “fuck” on the Desktop just to write notes (which he will probably never refer to)! Ah, what a glorious baptism by fire. By Friday, he mastered the workflow conceptually and has started on a probationary term this week.

December is always a transitional period. The northeast monsoon comes, calms and cleanses, heralding the new year. I associate December with Sec One Orientation (SOO) preparation, Buddies’ Training and Sec 1 Registration. Especially cloudy, windy days on the hill under the clock tower's shelter. I would love to go back to visit Mrs Anu and say a few words of advice to the OT and Buddies. Alas, it was not to be. Maybe in Phase 3 when the vaccine arrives, more will be possible.

NS — a detour — is coming to an end. I need to get back to who I once was and carry on from there. ∎

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