V2i1 by The Octant

VOL. 2, ISSUE 1

TUESDAY, 7 OCTOBER 2014

YALE-NUS, SINGAPORE

FIRST ANNIVERSARY DOUBLE ISSUE

EDITORS’ NOTE “The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/ being seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without ever seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen.” — Michel Foucault For a year now, our name—‘Panopt’ has been the source of much discussion and dare we say, criticism. What were the editors thinking when they first chose such a name? Didn’t they know that it has such negative connotations? Do we have to worry about being watched even while we exist in a nation of surveillance? We will be honest. When choosing ‘Panopt’, its association to the Panopticon was not far from our minds. But we are not the Panopticon, and we will never be. On the contrary, Panopt seeks to bridge the gap between the seeing and being seen. We believe in transparency and accountability, and we champion these through honest and insightful reporting. There is no fear of being seen if one is not in the wrong. In a small community like ours, secrets are hard to keep. The more important question is— how do we deal with these issues? Do we continue to talk about them in hushed tones behind closed doors? Or do we discuss them in the open; face-to-face, with our names behind our words? Panopt believes in the latter. We will not venture to make the claim that Panopt sees everything because there are limits that even we face. But we try our best, because everything that we see is translated

logo Parag Bhatnagar | cartoon Han Chong

into what the community sees, what you see. If our college funds are not being used in a sustainable or equitable manner, you deserve to know. If students are facing problems of cyber-bullying, you deserve to know. If our community is facing an identity crisis, you deserve to know. The difference between discussing an issue over meals or on Facebook, and in Panopt is that when an issue is brought up in Panopt, everybody knows. Everybody sees. We are a small community and every person matters. Knowledge matters because it is only with knowledge that change can come about. If we are unaware of tension brewing between two student organisations, we cannot do anything to resolve it. Panopt seeks to break the seeing/ being seen dichotomy and ensure that students, staff and faculty all have the knowledge to bring about change in our community. In this second volume of Panopt, our desire to constantly improve and be better has not waned. If anything, we are even more determined to make this second volume bigger and better. Our goal is simple. We want our News and Sports sections to be more relevant and informative; our Features section to be more stimulating and eye-catching; and our Opinion section to be more thought provoking and challenging. Don’t get us wrong—our writers have been doing a fabulous job so far, but we would be a poor paper if there was no

longer room for improvement. We also want to clarify and emphasize the status of Panopt as a student newspaper. In a previous Editors’ Note, we stated that we are an autonomous student newspaper. That is true. We are not subject to any form of censorship or control from the college administration, and none of our articles are ever read by a member of the faculty or staff before going to print. That said, Panopt is registered as a student organisation under the jurisdiction of the Dean of Students Office. What does this mean exactly? As with all other student organisations, Panopt has a Faculty Advisor—Vice-Rector Lage-Otero and a DF Advisor—Caroline, whose advice we greatly value. We also receive an annual budget from the DoS Office. However, these in no way constrain or limit the content of the paper as we are first and foremost, a newspaper dedicated to free speech and critical discourse. Alright! These stuffy editors have said enough now. We’ll leave you to read the awesome content our staff has painstakingly put together over their recess week and Week 7s. This issue is a double issue because we celebrate our one-year anniversary on Thursday. We hope you missed us over the two-week break; you won’t be rid of us anymore in the rest of the semester. Yours Always, Joyan and Spandana

7 Oct, 2014 | 1

NEWS

A MAJOR OR MINOR QUESTION story and sidebars Yonatan Gazit, May Tay | infographic Christopher Khew

our years ago, Samuel Lum ’17 was interning at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The experience made him realise the central role of finance in businesses, and inspired an academic interest in the field, which he now hopes to pursue as a minor. Students like Lum with alternative academic interests are not uncommon at Yale-NUS College. They run the gamut from those with more niche academic interests to others set on particular graduate courses, such as Engineering or Medicine. By the end of their second year at YaleNUS, students get their pick of 14 majors, from Anthropology to Urban Studies. These 14

A MINOR INTEREST A glimpse into a few alternative ideas for minors. Gender Studies: Sheryl Foo ’17 finds Gender Studies fascinating. “I am interested in critical social theories, and gender comes naturally as it governs many fundamental social institutions,” she said. “Last semester, I helped craft a 2MC course on gender studies facilitated by Professor Rebecca Tannenbaum...because I was frustrated at the lack of gender coverage in our CSI course. It was a very fruitful learning journey and I found it one of my favorite classes last year even though it was only 2MC.” Theatre Studies/Creative Writing: Sherlyn Goh ’17 discovered an interest in theatre studies after taking an introductory elective at NUS. “I really like the creative writing process, the analyzing and directing of plays,” she shared. “However, there are no theatre instructors or courses at Yale-NUS, nor clear instructions on the requisite electives for each major...In the course description for the Arts & Humanities major, it states…we have to take one critical approach course and two studio courses. Does my creative non-fiction writing course count as a studio course? Is it even a course under the Arts major? I’m worried about having to take many other arts-related electives for the major that are not directly related to my areas of interest.”

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majors are intended to cover between them an array of standard majors, such as Economics, and broader, interdisciplinary majors, such as Arts & Humanities and Environmental Studies. While most students will find their major and minor interests among these 14 choices, others with different interests will have to seek out their own academic pathways. As a new college, the number of possible majors at Yale-NUS is inevitably fewer than the number at more established colleges and universities. There are currently 82 possible majors at Yale University, and 65 for undergraduates at NUS. The way Yale-NUS accommodates the

various interests of its student body is through a division system. Most universities and colleges adopt a departmental system. “[Sometimes] it’s the same courses all over again, and you get into serious inefficiency,” explained Dean of Faculty, Charles Bailyn. He explained with an example, “Both in Chemistry and Physics, there’s an important course in thermodynamics, but it’s usually taught differently in both departments. It’s interesting to think about why thermodynamics is taught twice at all universities … but I think it certainly creates a kind of redundancy within the system.” “[At Yale-NUS] we only have divisions. One of the things that that allows you to

PAVING THE WAY TO GRADUATE SCHOOL Engineering: To Aaron Kurzak ’17, understanding mechanical engineering is crucial in the renewable energy sector, which he hopes to enter in the future. “The engineering degree at NUS normally requires students to follow a very rigorous curriculum, and it might become difficult to select very specific classes for a minor,” said Kurzak. “That said, Yale-NUS has been extremely supportive so far. Vice-Rector Eduardo Lage-Otero consulted the [NUS] Faculty of Engineering…and assured me I’d be able to take classes with them.” Although Engineering is not offered as a major in Yale-NUS, Head of Study of the Physical Sciences Professor Kang Hway Chuan advises students to speak with him or other science division faculty should they seek to fulfill general requirements for Engineering-related graduate studies. “What is needed for engineering grad school varies from place to place, and also from one discipline in engineering to another, so this needs some working out. I think [interested students and relevant faculty] need to strap down and work out the most suitable pathway. The earlier this is done, the better,” he added. Medicine: Medical school is on the cards for Jay Lusk ’18. “Statistically, international applicants to US medical schools have a

difficult time being admitted,” he said. “Yale-NUS needs to make sure that premedical students are advised early and can begin planning for the future sooner rather than later. [The college has to] ensure that prospective medical applicants are wellqualified in the subject areas that medical schools require for admission.” Currently there is no pre-med advisor in the college. But according to a draft document on medical school advice for Yale-NUS students, those interested in North American post-graduate medical schools or the DukeNUS Graduate Medical School should visit the Association of American Medical Colleges and Duke-NUS websites for advice. The document will be disseminated to the student body once it is ready. Associate Professor of Science Neil Clarke, who previously taught at the John Hopkins School of Medicine, cautioned against anxiety over fulfilling prerequisites, “60% of graduate medical school students did not major in a science at all. Of course you still need to have taken some collegelevel science courses and passed the MCAT. Even so, the MCAT is changing right now to reflect the fact that you do not need to have had a highly specialized background in science in order to do medicine.” Clarke suggested CIPE work with those aspiring to attend medical school.

do is to have broader majors. Some of our majors are typical departmental subject matter, like economics and psychology, but [others] are broader ... Physical Sciences is an example,” said Bailyn. Another motivation for the division system is the interest in crafting a more holistic intellectual experience for students. “Departments are important for graduate education, but from an undergrad point of view it is just not the case that most economics majors are going to be economists, nor history majors historians. If [you are] trying to [create] ... an in-depth intellectual experience for the sake of having an in-depth intellectual experience rather than perpetuating a next generation of professors of the exact same discipline, then it looks a little different.” Students who want to explore alternative or niche ideas for their major pathways or minors should speak to relevant faculty who can assist them with planning an appropriate set of courses. Within the current academic framework, these students will have to craft their own pathways through existing majors. For

instance, a student looking to focus on dance will do so through the Dance Arts pathway through the Arts and Humanities major. Where possible, students can supplement their academic experiences with relevant electives at NUS, independent study modules, or summer programs. Over the past summer, 30 students from the Class of 2017 attended Yale Summer Sessions. Including those 30, a total of 51 students attended summer courses with transferrable credits through CIPE opportunities, according to CIPE. Creating new majors is not feasible in the near future, as Yale-NUS is relatively committed to building up existing majors. A new major would need to be approved by five academic committees, according to Bailyn. Mentors will be important for students seeking specific academic pathways. At YaleNUS, all students are assigned an academic advisor in their freshman year. After they declare their major, respective major advisors and Heads of Study will feature more prominently in the advising process. “A lot of the faculty are

also very willing to talk to students who have… interests in common with them, whether or not they are their official advisor,” said Bailyn. “We’ve got a decent faculty student ratio so there are opportunities for everyone to have these conversations.” While the general framework is in place, details on specific pathways remain undefined. A concern amongst students is that relevant decisions and faculty hirings will be made a long time from now, leaving students with less time to explore more fields of study. However, students may not need to worry after all. “A lot of the faculty hiring over the next six months ... is to make sure that the classes we need to teach at the time we need to teach them to get them through their pathways that we think students will want, are actually taught,” informed Bailyn. In building a new college, the student body, faculty, administration and staff have to work closely in order to strengthen the college’s curriculum and policies. Time and patience is needed, but more importantly, so is communication and mutual understanding.

7 Oct, 2014 | 3

NEWS/FEATURE

FEATURE

WEEK 7 IN ASIA AND THE WORLD CRITIQUING THE

COMMON CURRICULUM story Regina Marie Lee photo Pareen Chaudhari

W On Oct. 5th students created exhibits to share their trips with the school.

story Yonatan Gazit, May Tay photo used with permission from Tan Weiliang

eek Seven at Yale-NUS started with the Class of 2018 dispersing over parts of the globe for their Learning Across Boundaries (LABs) trips, with some starting over the middle of Fall Recess Week and the last one ending on Friday, Oct. 3. The trips were organized by the Center for International and Professional Experiences (CIPE), and there were 10 LABs in total: three in Singapore, three in Europe, and four in South East Asia. The purpose of the LABs, according to Dean of CIPE Anastasia Vrachnos, is to, “[take] a collective pause from the curriculum, and send every freshman out in these small groups with faculty to learn different things in different ways in a different setting and then bring it back to the community, and have a symposium of shared learning,” she said. “It works well because its a complement to what’s happening in the common curriculum.” According to Ritika Biswas ’18, who went on the Vienna trip, the trip’s experiential learning is what made it so memorable. “Being able to talk to Professor Rosenberg about Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony while actually walking around his summer house and Beethoven’s house is something I’m never going to forget,” she said. The trip to India had a unique added dimension of learning, as it coincided with local political events. “We were in Mamallapuram when the protestors against an alleged corruption case of the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu marched past us. Additionally, Modi made a groundbreaking speech in [New York City] while we were in India,” Gordon Goh ’18 said. “The current affairs pertaining to India set us thinking about contemporary issues as we

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go on learning [during the week].” The trips allowed students to have an intellectual experience outside the classroom. “We got exposure to many people in many situations,” Thu Truong ’18, who was on the Love Inc. trip in Singapore, said. “You can actually see how [theories] work in real life. It’s like everything comes into 3D, instead of 2D.” The LABs’ budget, according to Gin Ong ’18, who went on the London art trip, is well worth the experiential learning. “There really are certain aspects of art that one can only learn in London,” she said. “One example would be the process of dérive, which would require one to be physically in the city to experience.” Agreeing with Ong, Goh said that, “The best way to justify the money spent would be to showcase and share about the things that we have learnt in Week 7, [and] the Week 7 Symposium is the perfect platform for this.” Trips that were further away, such as the ones in Europe, required a co-pay. “Obviously if you are flying to Indonesia, it’s gonna be a lot easier than flying to Greece,” Dean Vrachnos said. “We try to make allowances for that or equalize that in that trips that are much more costly often have a co-pay.” Still, Vrachnos said CIPE works hard to keep the LABs low-cost. “It’s actually not a huge part of CIPE’s budget relative to, for example, the things we support in the summer, which includes a lot of language scholarships and opportunities to study at Yale and other things,” she said. “I actually think that as a value for money proposition, week seven is one of the best things going at the college.” The exact location and aim of each trip can be found at http://cipe.yale-nus.edu.sg.

ith half a semester over, the Class of 2018 has finally had a taste of a key aspect of Yale-NUS: the Common Curriculum. For six weeks, freshmen took classes in Philosophy and Political Thought, Literature and Humanities, Comparative Social Institutions and Scientific Inquiry. Many were excited for the Common Curriculum courses– did it meet their expectations? A common sentiment from freshmen was that classes were valuable and engaging. Tong Ray Nee ’18 said, “Classes have been exhausting but very enriching. Seminar discussions were insightful, and drawing parallels between seminars helped. I also got to explore areas of study I have never touched, like the natural sciences.” For Jane Zhang ’18, it was the professors who made her learning come alive. “With professors who are very passionate about the subject because it’s their specialty, everyone in the seminar is really engaged and very interested.” However, the flip side was true as well She continued, “But in other seminars, where maybe the topic for that seminar is not the professor’s specialty, they might not know what to say and that decreases the morale of the class.” This sentiment about professors not being adequately prepared was echoed by Seow Yongzhi ’18. He said, “The common curriculum is very well-designed, but because it is so broad, there are some areas that professors don’t specialise in, so they might not carry across the material as clearly. In some instances, students might end up teaching the professor.” Evan Ma ’17 agreed, and attributed this problem to professors not having enough time. He said, “When the professor doesn’t have the time to digest the material and break down their own assumptions, they sometimes go into class a bit confused or uninterested. It’s not that the curriculum is bad, or that we shouldn’t have different professors teach one course, but the professors need more time.” Responding to these concerns, course coordinator Professor Marty Weissman said, “Students, from their experience in previous schools, expect a science class to have a science expert at the front of the room who knows all the science facts. But this class is primarily about process -- how the iterative process of observation, theory, model, and prediction works, and how it varies from one field of

science to another. In SI, the students shouldn’t expect the instructors to have mastery of every field of science. Rather, they should expect the instructors to have thought deeply about the scientific process, and to be on their side as they struggle through challenging material together.” Admittedly, some of this feedback is not new–they were raised by the Class of 2017, too. With the concerns voiced by the sophomore class last year, the professors did alter the courses somewhat. When making changes, the coordinators took into account student feedback as well as the makeup of the teaching team. Professor Rebecca Tannenbaum said, “We wanted to play to the strengths of the faculty who are teaching the course this year. For instance, since we have three psychologists teaching CSI, we reshaped the course to give more attention to psychology early on.” These changes, however, were mainly focused on the curriculum. For the CSI course, the professors decided to expand on popular topics, such as religion and power, and eliminated others that did not work as well. Moreover, the topics were rearranged. Tannenbaum explained, “This was to better reflect important themes in the course and to make the course more of a coherent whole. The first half of the class now focuses on the theme “the power of the social”; the second

half focuses on institutions.” Similarly, for the SI course, Weissman spent time “writing and rewriting a scientific narrative for the course”. He said, “Last year, the course seemed to jump dramatically from week to week, and I hope that this year the course seems smooth for 3-4 weeks at a time, maybe more.” “But students might have to ponder for a while before they see all the connections,” Weissman added, admitting that it was hard for all students to understand inquiry points “even when they are sometimes neck-deep in the scientific content”. To facilitate this, professors tried to “make explicit mentions of these scientific process moments in lecture, and carve out time in seminar for discussions of this process”. The extent to which the curriculum can be changed also depends on the domain of the course. For the Literature and Humanities 1 course, there was more flexibility. Humanities Division Director Professor Rajeev Patke explained, “The broad aim of the Literature and Humanities courses is to introduce significant cultural products from a variety of world civilisations.” He added, “Based on student-feedback and faculty evaluation of course workloads, the teaching team decided to rebalance between coverage and depth, reducing the amount

of reading. LH has more flexibility in this respect than courses like PPT and CSI which are committed to key thinkers or to thematic topics. For example, we tried out Don Quixote, Hamlet and St Augustine, but decided to drop those to make room for other key texts from different cultures and periods.” For the PPT course, the amount of reading was also reduced significantly. Professor Nicholas Silins explained, “We decided to cut back on difficult systematic works that require extended immersion for comprehension. To allow us to immerse the class more deeply in systematic yet more accessible works by Santideva, Descartes, and Mill, we cut works by Cicero, Zhu Xi, Machiavelli, Galileo, Hooke and Plato’s Republic.” Still, even with changes to the curriculum, some students may still struggle to keep up with classes, falling behind or losing interest. To deal with this, it is essential that professors are can adequately engage students in seminars. Yet, students, especially in a new college like Yale-NUS, also play an important role. Ma said, “To me, a problem with the Common Curriculum is students who give up too easily and quickly without putting in the effort to try to understand. When you see half of the class not doing their readings, that hurts morale. That to me is not in the spirit of YaleNUS.”

The class of 2018 had a different set of texts from the sophomores.

7 Oct, 2014 | 5

FEATURE/SPORTS

OPINION

CARPE DIME A LOOK-BACK ON THE IFGs

WHY DO WE CARE SO MUCH ABOUT GRADES?

story and infographic Kavya Gopal

leep-deprived, caffeinated, hungry— there are many words to sum up the plight of college kids. But perhaps one that is universal is “broke.” With Singapore topping the charts as one of the most expensive countries to live in, it is hardly surprising that 81% of a surveyed population of 69 students at Yale-NUS considers Singapore expensive to live in as a student. So how do students get by? Theodore Lai ’17 said, “Being a Residential College 4 resident has certainly helped. Unlike high school where I still had to pay for daily meals and shuttle myself to and from school, everything is provided for here.” But not everyone likes to stay in RC4. Students often venture out to explore Singapore, mostly for food. As seen below, 76% of the surveyed students said they spend the highest proportion of their budget on food. As Joceline Yong ’18 said “eating out in a non-food court place can be fairly expensive. Public transport too adds up over a period of time.” Annette Wu ’17 added that frugality is really the key to maintaining a budget – “I used to live in Vietnam and food was much more affordable. I could splurge on certain things like snacking. But over the past year I have gotten better at managing money.” Iwani Mawocha ’18 agreed that she too had underestimated the expense of living in Singapore–“It’s a lot more expensive than I was expecting. I think a lot more international students have expressed this concern. We joke about not having a single penny left in our wallets but it’s actually true”. Regarding budgeting weekly spending, most students spend less than 50 SGD a week. But the student survey shows 27% do not track expenses at all. Yong recommended using smartphone apps to do this. She added, “As far as getting a job goes, it’s impossible to generalize as it depends on an individual’s financial status.” As Lai says, there is one way to survive: “Memorize [this] phrase: I don’t need this.”

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Yale-NUS’ performance was certainly cause for celebration.

story David Chappell | photo Pareen Chaudhari

successful free throw from the business faculty brought the basketball final on Friday, Sept. 17 and the IFGs to a nail biting conclusion. Yet, while YaleNUS College may have narrowly missed out on victory in the closely fought 42-40 game, their performance in the IFGs as a whole was a resounding success. Despite only competing in 16 of the 24 events and going up against faculties nearly 20 times their size, Yale-NUS emerged sixth at the end of the competition, championing dodgeball and placing second in both basketball and reversi. This impressive achievement can largely be attributed to two factors: the dedication of the students and the Yale-NUS spirit embodied by all of them. Similarly, these factors can be considered achievements in themselves, as summed up by Rakesh Prabhakaran ’17 when he said, “sports competitions are a good way to prove our skill, but they’re a better way to prove our spirit.” Truly, Yale-NUS would not have done as well if it had not been for the level of participation from all the students. A large proportion of Yale-NUS’s body of students donned their blue and orange shirts to practice regularly, even at a really busy time of the year. It says a lot that, despite a general lack of training facilities, competitors were still willing to show up and give it their all. As Prabhakaran, a competitor in both dodgeball and men’s basketball, noted, “there were times when Tchoukball trained from 10pm to midnight, and many times when teams were waiting for the MPH to free up.”

Similarly, Yale-NUS’s spirit vastly outshone that of other faculties, both from supporters and competitors. All the teams showed humility in both victory and defeat and all fought to the bitter end. The community, likewise turned up in droves for every event, culminating in the basketball final where Yale-NUS support outnumbered that of business’s two to one.

BY THE NUMBERS: FACULTY

POINTS

PLACE

MED

ENG

BIZ

ART

SCI

Yale

USP

SOC

SDE

LAW

DEN

Freshmen back and diligently working after a short, but important Week 7 break.

column Kaushik Swaminathan photo Christopher Khew

nrolling from the top three percent of a Yale-NUS application pool is remarkable, not simply because of the low acceptance rate but because we have chosen to come here to be the torch bearers, to be in the vanguard of an educational revolution. Six weeks into school, we now have a taste of unadulterated freedom, and while overwhelmed by a daunting workload, we can conquer it. We applied here because we learn unlike most, and we attend this institution today because we have been recognized to have the talent to succeed in our future ventures. Surprisingly and perhaps a little disappointingly, however, is how obsessed our cohort has been on an arbitrary letter professors have assigned on our quizzes, assignments, and tests. Facebook statuses raving about first ‘As’ are not isolated incidents. It is worrying that a community that prides itself on its academic excellence is still shackled by the very failures of a system in which excellence is defined not by intelligence in its intangible form but in letter grades that homogenize an individual process. While a stellar transcript at the end of college may put

you at an advantage over other candidates, a student here simply for future career benefits does not understand the liberal arts model and certainly is not taking full advantage of what is offered at our school. And at the end of the day, the first twelve weeks of school are grade-less! Our priorities are wrong, and we cannot distinguish ourselves as a one of a kind university if we are archaic and anachronistic in our identification of intelligence. The beauty of a semester without grades is that we have the liberty to acclimate to this dramatic change—a life without parental supervision and in the case of many students, a land thousands of miles away from home— at our own pace. In self defeating attempts to be the ‘best’ in class and working to get the highest grade on the next essay, we lose the most valuable lessons that are taught by our peers, in conversation, in cooperation, and most importantly, in failure. The grade-less semester is almost a safety net to see how far you can extend yourself before setting your priorities straight and balancing an academic, extracurricular, and social life at a pace

suitable to your needs. If we do not recognize the importance and benefits of taking risks and failing now, we will never do so and by conforming to the very things Yale-NUS wants us to shed, we become ordinary in an extraordinary setting. Realize that I am not suggesting us to actively seek not to get an ‘A’. Far from that, if you are truly talented in a subject, you should be recognized and appreciated for it. Sadly, students crying over ‘Cs’ and celebrating ‘As’ is a sign that we are not appreciating the act of learning but simply the subjective acknowledgement of understanding what has been taught. Instead, celebrate that by failing today, we have gotten a taste of disappointment and that we fall so that we can rise taller the next time. We are not paying thousands of dollars to constantly be patted on the back and be reaffirmed that we are doing fine in life. To the contrary, you are here to fail, understand that you will not always succeed, and that the twelve years prior to now have given you a clean slate to absorb all that the professors and students have to offer here.

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OPINION

KEYHOLES column and photo Anne Caroline Franklin

good friend once told me “the way I see truth is like this—each one of us is looking through a tiny keyhole on a different door into a singular room. We are looking into the same room, but the interior looks completely different for each person, depending on the placement of the door, and the position and size of the keyhole.” Yale-NUS is the interior of this room— some larger whole that no one of us can fully see or know through our tiny keyhole vantage point. So, take a look—what is Yale-NUS? Perhaps for a professor, it is a job, or a pool of eager young minds, an opportunity to pursue research, or a tenure, a secure stream of resources, a chance to build a curriculum from the ground up, an opportunity to live and travel in southeast Asia. Perhaps for an administrator it is a start-up company, a new fusion ‘brand’, the chance to be part of something new and fresh, a way to re-think education, a sign of hope for future international relations. Perhaps for CIPE or Admissions personnel, it is a beautiful and terrifying chance to try something new, to actually implement all those programs and opportunities that bigger and older schools just could not handle, a place to put risk into practice. Perhaps for a parent it is ‘a compromise’, or an abstract force that is changing their child in ways they are not completely comfortable with, or perhaps its an American school, or ‘that school in Singapore’, or its the cause of sleepless nights and other ‘empty-nest’ symptoms. Perhaps for a student it could be a stepping stone, a gentle introduction to the international job market, a place to network and make connections, ‘just another college’, an eventual academic transcript, a family away from home, the chance to be part of something revolutionary, a place to make friends, an opportunity to find what they love, a good excuse to travel, a once-in-alifetime, something they have worked towards for years, a space to be a leader, a space to be a learner, a culmination of a random sequence of events, an example of shifting paradigms in global tertiary education. How does our position in this Yale-NUS community influence how we describe ‘what it is’ to our outside friends, our families, our NUS neighbors, the press? How has the shape and size and tilt of our keyhole painted the portrait of shadows and light that we now claim to be ‘Yale-NUS’? And more than any of this—how can

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Yale-NUS be an amalgamation of all of these keyhole impressions, at once all of them and none? I have chewed on these thoughts extensively in my last 15 months of being part of this dynamic community. I often wonder—How can each one of us most respectfully act, speak, live, and contribute, in and as a part of Yale-NUS so as to best honor and uphold our various definitions of what it is? What can I do, as an individual, to most responsibly do justice to the myriad pieces of shadow and light, promises and potentials, hopes and fears, expectations and labels that comprise this living breathing ever-changing thing we are creating, together? Am I primarily to be a student? A

community builder? A feedback-generator? A 21 year-old? The answer to this question will not only shape our time together, but will have ramifications that seep into the roots of our community, directing the bend of the branches of our Yale-NUS tree, as it matures and steadies itself in the generations to come. So whether Yale-NUS is, for you, a 9:005:00 income generator, or your sole reality, or your closest friends, or a lot of readings, or the chance to be part of a Community of Learning in Asia for the World…. I invite you to ask yourself: first—what does your keyhole glimpse look like? And second—when can we go through the doors and bring life to the room?

Branching toward oil-spilt sky.