It’s 9:30 pm, and I have to admit that my mind struggles to form even a single coherent thought about the day—so let me take you through it instead.
8:45 am – I wake to the sound of Manu calling me and telling me it’s almost time for breakfast. For a few more minutes, I bury myself in my blankets and almost forget we have a final in less than an hour.
9:00 am – I head over to the dining area and prepare my regular meal for the day: warm oats in milk mixed with milo and cut fruits—plus a bit of maple syrup. I never have breakfast back home (in the Philippines or in Singapore), but this special concoction has become my comfort food here, and I realize how much I’m going to miss it when I leave.
9:20 am – I walk to the business center—cheese slice in hand—and find an empty seat to settle in. Everyone around me is staring intently at their notes, and it finally dawns upon me that it’s game time. The final we’ve been waiting for: 4 hours and 45 questions on everything we’ve learned this past 6 weeks on Global Health. I scroll through Spotify to find a playlist I want to listen to during the exam, and silently whisper a “thank you” to Professor for letting us listen to music. Eventually, I settle on a playlist I titled “Everlast”, which is filled with OSTs from my favorite Thai shows.
9:25 – Professor Jonathan plays the song “Sunday Best” on a speaker to lift our spirits up, and some of us dance a little in our seats to get the good vibe going. He and Professor Paul try to give us some words of encouragement. I munch on my slice of cheese for some good luck.
9:30 – We’re given the fancy exam booklets they printed yesterday, and I ask Professor Paul if I could borrow a pen. The timer starts.
10:30 am – I finish my cheese slice and grab a glass of water. I’m only 13 questions in, but I need something new to keep my mind going. I take the small container of milo Manu bought for me and mix in some droplets of water to make this thick milo fudge—something I usually do at home when I’m studying and just want something sweet to snack on. I put on some Argentine Tango/Salsa songs and let my body move on its own while my mind does the hard work.
11:30 am – The questions on the exam progressively become more confusing, and I’m aware of all the blanks I’ve left in the previous pages. I switch my playlist to intense Japanese music from my top sports anime to motivate myself to keep going.
12:30 pm – It’s the final hour stretch. I’ve gone through all the questions, and now I have to go back to everything I missed. Honestly, I’ve never been so confused in my entire life. I knew this exam was going to be a real test of our logic and understanding of Global Health concepts, but really, my mind was just not mind-ing.
1:00 pm – I put on what I consider to be my favorite jive song, play it on repeat, and finally settle on its title as my code name.
1:30 pm – Time’s up. The exam is finished, but most of us stay for another 15 minutes before handing in our papers. I feel happy, relieved, proud, and exhausted. I leave the business center, flailing my arms and legs around to get the blood moving in them again. Professor Jonathan texts us in the group chat to meet as a group near the parking lot at 2:00 pm for some surprise. I wait by our room balcony with Sophia and John talking about what food we want to eat. The rest of the group gathers a bit later outside the business center to guess what they could possibly have planned.
2:00 pm – We walk altogether towards the small grass clearing to find our professors with cartoon-sized boxing gloves and the biggest smiles on their faces. Behind them is a giant inflatable boxing ring and two tables with champagne to the side. We all quickly rush over in excitement, and they greet us with warm congratulations. Professor Jonathan tells us that they actually wanted to build us an obstacle course, but this surprise was so much more than enough.
2:10 pm – We take turns entering the boxing ring and start jumping like chaos all around. Ethelia decides to become the first egg and curls up into a fetus-like position in the middle. She refuses to let her egg crack, and somewhere along the way, she actually slips out of the spaces—into the grass–while still very much intact. A boxing match begins and people take turns knocking each other down, laughing, and trying to catch their breath before charging at their opponent again.
2:30 pm – Most of us have pretty much exhausted ourselves so we retreat to the outside world and gather around with our food. I head over to the kitchen to heat up some pasta I bought yesterday, and Char shares some of her french fries with me which really made my inner child happy. The others share drinks while we talk about everything and nothing. Professor Paul and Jonathan soon head over to the boxing ring to start their own match, and I feel that I got a glimpse of them play fighting from when they were still kids. I think to myself about how great it is to see adults—our actual professors, our role models—always joking around (when appropriate), having the most creative ideas, and even pranking us or their friends. I smile because I don’t think I could ever “grow up”, and with all the cartoons and children’s shows I still watch at 20 years old, it’s comforting to know that even as an adult, I don’t really have to let go of the joys that come with being a child or my childhood.
2:46 pm – Professor Jonathan punches Professor Paul square in the face. The latter falls down.
3:00 pm – Those who have finished eating sneak back into the bouncy house to relax and chill. I get into a little boxing match with Drew, and I’m repeatedly knocked over and falling around the ring. I feel like I’m a little ball flying around, and I’m having the most fun until I accidentally breathe while swallowing my own saliva. I sit down for a few solid minutes in complete exhaustion (I didn’t know box jumping was going to be such cardio), coughing every now and then trying to catch my breath.
3:20 pm – I think some fluids definitely went down the wrong pipe because I spend the next half an hour drinking water and vomiting everything I consumed. It was probably a mistake to jump so much right after eating, but I made an impulsive choice and did not regret it—even with the pain. Manu keeps me company, and we find out that our mothers have the same birthday (today) out of the many similarities we’ve learned about each other. It’s coincidentally also the birthday of one of my best friends, Channelle, and the two of them hold such core places in my life.
3:40 pm – I call my mom to sing and greet her happy birthday. She talks to me about the family dinner they had outside, the new pair of pantulog (home clothes) my sisters gifted her, and just random things only we would understand. I miss my family, and so I’m excited to be with them again this weekend for a few weeks before I have to go back to Singapore for the new semester. I can’t wait for the school year to begin as well because I miss the found family I’ve made at Yale-NUS. But somberly I tell my mom how much I wish the days would go slower here, about all the special people who have made this space a home, and how much I’m going to miss them when we’re on opposite sides of the world again.
4:00 pm – A group of us walk to Rivonia Village to buy some hair dye for John’s and Eliana’s impromptu salon appointment tonight. We go through the familiar Clicks and gather all the materials we need. John’s planning on dying his hair blonde, while Eliana wants to dye just a strip of her hair either brown or red. Mariana also decides that she wants to dye her armpits blue, and Manu and I get some geometric matching gold earrings to join our little roomie collection.
