Work Hard, Play Hard!!

By:

Reshan Selvavelautham

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Reshan Selvavelautham

<i>"Hello" in your host country's language:</i> Hello/Vanakkam/Ni Hao <i>Home Institution (your U.S. University/College):</i> Vassar College <i>Expected graduation year:</i> 2023 <i>Destination city & country:</i> Singapore <i>Program provider:</i> Yale-NUS College <i>Major/minor:</i> International Studies <i>Demographics:</i> South Asian, First-Generation American, First-Generation College Student <i>Future career aspirations:</i> My dream is to become a diplomat. Otherwise, my goals include working in the U.S. government, NGO, non-profit and/or in education. <i>Top 3 goals for your time abroad:</i> Learn how to be independent and to be more confident in travelling internationally; Immerse myself in the Singaporean culture by meeting new people and making new friends; Discover and learn about my own culture and heritage.

Unlike the past few weeks, this week has felt more academic than more sight-seeing. I had my first group presentation on Friday and it went really well! I was nervous since it was my first time presenting here and I felt like as the only exchange student in my class, I felt the pressure to impress everyone. My two classmates and I were presenting about health workforce migration (HWM). So, our goal was to teach our class for an hour about this topic through discussions and the readings we were assigned that day. HWM is an important topic during the pandemic as healthcare workers migrate out of their countries to richer places for better work, leaving their home countries behind without any workers. In order to feel more confident in our presentation, my group and I met a few times this week and met with our professor during her office hours. We presented and it was a success! We included a few Slidos, led discussion questions, and facilitated a WHO-like simulation with our classmates. I am so relieved that we completed it!

Now it was time to play hard for the weekend! On Friday night, my friends and I went to a movie theater in the neighborhood Orchard to watch Spider Man: No Way Home! It was my first time watching it (I know a little late) but it was so good! The theater was really nice but not too different compared to the ones back in the States. However, the movie had subtitles in Chinese. Afterwards, we went to an NUS late-night fast food restaurant called SuperSnacks and called it a night. On Saturday, we went to the Singapore Zoo! It was really fun and I got to see a lot of animals ranging from the orangutans to penguins to my favorite, the elephant (hence the two pictures). We were there for three hours and it was my first time going to a tropical zoo. Check that off my Singapore travel list!

Photo 1: Feeding of the Elephants

Photo 2: Wood artwork of an elephant