Time for endings.

Agency versus acceptance. That’s the thrust of my last tutorial. The question it raises is simply ‘is it better to change your life from without, or to change your life from within’? The bulk of interventions focus on external change: quantifiable, objective, operationalisable change. If you change what you are, you change who you are.

Then there’s the concept of change from within. If you change who you are, you change what you are.

Today was the last tutorial of my undergraduate life. On Friday, I hand in my last assignment. Next Wednesday, I attend my last lecture. In four weeks, I sit my last exam. Then it’s over. I’m done. University ends. Hello real world.

So strange that three years ago, University was a daunting unknown challenge. Today it’s comfortable. The things which called me elsewhere don’t call anymore. Some days I feel almost like an alien when I go back to Singapore. Thing is, I’ll miss this place and the people I’ve met here. Even if I get into Masters, some friends I won’t ever see again. One in particular tugs a little more at the heartstrings than the others. I almost miss her already.

It’s a mixed feeling, I don’t like the uncertainty of what’s out there, but yet I want to run out and face it. Test myself against it. Beat it.

It’s a time for endings, I suppose. This time I’ll have to make my own beginnings. And you know what? I’d go for change from within any time. Not just because I’m a humanist at heart, but because internal change just means so much more than external. Someone’s not making me change, I’m making myself change.

That’s an empowerment and self-validation that few can beat.