Reflections at a halfway point – National University of Singapore

By Reuben Passi, National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore

After spending a whole semester and over four months in Singapore, my perceptions of the country, university, and perspective overall on life have completely changed!  

One of the biggest takeaways I have gotten from this experience so far is that learning to be optimistic and open-hearted is truly the best way to move throughout your life as meeting so many people from so many places combined with feeling so many mixed emotions after moving to a new country makes you truly question a lot of aspects of life. It is a huge privilege to undertake a year abroad and it is so important to remember that and push for a better world for everyone around you! 

Moreover, being away from home and often your entire support network of family and friends is extremely tough at first. However, coming on exchange has allowed me to grow into not only a more independent person, but it has also allowed me to make lifelong connections with people across the world from different sociocultural backgrounds which is an opportunity I would never have had before. This also impacts your connections back home as you realise who is there to support you when you are going through are hard time or if you are struggling to adjust to your new environment. 

Being in Singapore has also made me realise just how many cultures and histories there are to learn about in the world. Whilst this may seem obvious and is something I was already aware of, without visiting Singapore and surrounding countries, I would never have truly learnt about the intertwining of culture, religion, and colonialism with the contemporary era. Immersing yourself in a new culture is so much better than you can ever anticipate as there are so many little lived experiences and intricacies present in everyday life that you would never discover or see written about online. 

On an academic note, being at NUS has also made me learn how to truly curate a work-life balance as the workload for each module is much greater than that back at home which at first was tough to deal with. However, with proper planning, it became extremely manageable and brought me little stress in comparison to how I used to study back home which will be super helpful to improve my academic abilities back at UOM. 

Study Abroad is a truly brilliant programme and if you find yourself lucky enough to be in a position to do one then I cannot recommend it enough!