name dropping- bigtime
Oh my god. I came to my first real lecture in SMU, which was Marketing Research. I can start by saying that Singaporean students are really focused and serious and the professor requires us all to have a name tag on our desk every lecture so that he/she can address you at any time. My name tag is a piece of paper, ripped out from my block notes…
This is not the way the Singaporeans do it. Everybody has printed a colorful, stylish name tag, which they have thoughtfully designed and covered in plastic. All of the sudden I found myself in a complete name- mess.
Names like “Xion Phiang Khlo”, “Yhling Mwjo Lee Jan” etc appeared everywhere and when they were called from the list the pronunciation of some names were amazing; Names like “my tree” “yahoo” “one” “theory” “sunny” and “waiting” was read out loud. Often when names were called by the professor the response from students were similar to; Yes my name is Kiangh Loi Meh, but you can call me Melissa..(Adam, David etc)
What? How did you come up with that nick name?
My name appeared on the list, and oh my god. It took the teacher 10 times to try to say my name, or at least something similar to Evelina. How difficult can it be? Next time it is probably better to respond; Yes my name is Evelina, but you can call me thunder.
Anyways, starting the lecture we were straight away required to calculate probability, mean values and other statistics that I put way behind me. The panic in my head was incredible. When the time came to team up with somebody for the project I grabbed the first available student, hoping that faith would give me a good partner.
What happens 20 minutes into the lecture?? My new team member falls asleep? WHY? HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN TO ME? And she did not fall slightly asleep, but she was dropping the entire head on the desk over and over...Case of sleep sickness? The panic in my head was now enormous and the only thing I could think was; “how the hell will I get through this without Monika and Swedish coffee?”
I have still no god answer and I am just hoping that my team member slept through the lecture because she thought it was toooo easy.
Monika, if you see this, grab some Gevalia coffee and come to Singapore and rescue me.
