Gift Horse: What’s an inauguration without presents from the parents? Ever since Yale-NUS was told that Yale would be gifting them a statue of Nathan Hale, the oldest structure at Yale which depicts the spy who wasn’t, people began speculating how and where Yale-NUS would fit the spectacular and giant statue. However, onlookers were somewhat underwhelmed by Yale’s gift of a bronze statue, which can be held by hand. We are just glad that the gift from NUS, which is a specially commissioned Chinese ink painting, is significantly larger and not done on an A4 size sheet.
Gender Bender: Last Friday, first-years broke a gender norm as part of Comparative Social Institutions, and many decided to cross-dress. Well, cross-dressing is not the only way to break gender norms, guys, and we hope your class discussions covered that. Meanwhile, after seeing several first-year women walk around with painted moustaches, we overheard a genuinely curious junior ask if all the women had suddenly forgotten to shave their moustaches that morning. Ha ha.
Memorize Social Thought: If you saw sophomores a little more stressed than usual, it was because the MST teaching team put in place an exam to test their theoretical knowledge and recall ability of their readings. We apologize, on behalf of all juniors, for not doing our readings properly last semester. But, we cannot help but wonder if this is the best way to test students. Surely, an additional essay asking students to critically analyze the material (as was the case for juniors) rather than memorize readings would have been a better test. Anyhow, we enjoyed all the quotes in the Yale-NUS students Facebook group comparing an exam to bureaucracy. Weber, anyone?
Hang in There: The end is only a few weeks away. Remember to keep breathing and try to get some sleep. For juniors who have already written 10 cover letters, only 25 more to go, and you may just find a job. Maybe. For sophomores, try not to get so overwhelmed, you ain’t seen nothing yet. For first-years, try not to spend so much time in the library, the ungraded semester never returns. Seriously.