Scholarly Life

When I first got here, I realised that the academic culture here is very different from Singapore. Like in Singapore when I was doing my undergrad in uni, the relationship between the supervisors and lecturers with the students was very much more formal. When you had to meet them it would be either in the office, or in the university itself, but when I came here I was offered my negotiated project, and my supervisor contacted me and told me to meet up with him. So I thought, OK, it's going to be in his office. That was my expectation, but when David called me, he was like, "Let's meet in a cafe!" and I was like, "Oh my god!" I was a bit taken aback, but yes, I was still very excited because it was something very different for me. And it was really really fun because you got me a cup of coffee and sat down and said, "OK, so what shall we do for our project now?" At one point, I was really nervous because I couldn't handle this because it was like having a coffee with my friend at a cafe, and on the other hand it was really exciting. Another thing would be, I think it took my supervisor many months, or maybe still, for him to get me to call him by his first name, because back in Singapore, we call the supervisors and lecturers either Sir or Ma'am. Here I realised my supervisor and my lecturers said, please call us by our first names. Coming from an Asian background, it was very difficult to call your teacher, your supervisor, by their name, so I'm still working on that. I call you by your name.