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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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A New Identity

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Identities, even in the form of an email address, assure me of my place in the world and motivate me. It is an inspiring privilege to wear the weight of an institution like an Athenian himation. Do not underestimate the power exuded by meagre glyphs in the address bar; it invites others to pause and pay attention. I was formerly 131416w@student.hci.edu.sg and quince_yq_pan@spf.gov.sg. Since Tuesday, 17 August 2021, I took on a new identity.

Neither the anonymous qp8888@ox.ac.uk nor the look-at-my-matriculation-year quince.pan.21@ucl.ac.uk — phantoms of what could have been.

But the legitimate, professional, proper quince.pan@kcl.ac.uk.

One cannot distinguish between student and staff as the email address nomenclature is the same. This is immensely invigorating. Every time I open Outlook, I am reminded that the professors and I are the same in style, if not substance. I can achieve whatever they have achieved. I’ve got one foot in the door, and that fact is stamped on every email I send. We share the online stage.

“Quince Pan” has always been a brand, even if I am the only observer. I customised my entire Microsoft Office 365 suite, upholstering it in Avenir Next LT Pro and my favourite shades of green and orange.

I’ve got three years to spend with my darling quince.pan@kcl.ac.uk, and I am primed and ready. Andrew Marvell captured this feeling well in “To His Coy Mistress”.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may,

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour

Than languish in his slow-chapped power.

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Through the iron gates of life:

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run.

∎

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