Lemonade

Sometimes life gives you lemon and sometimes it gives you a wrinkled brown thing; it just seems purely useless. Unfortunately,this is a part of life, so sometimes it is difficult. This post is dedicated to those times when it’s just not working out . It’s perfectly normal if you’re unhappy at one point even when everyone else is happy.

If you’ve read the previous posts, you might think this summer programme has been amazing. Well, I too have my cloudy days. During our stay here, especially in the first three weeks or so, we had a colossal amount of work. Do you think I’m exaggerating? Let’s do the Maths: Reading reflections were due every midnight after a class day, which was three days a week; three site visits or guest lecture reviews per week; weekly journal for two different modules each week; and each work is around 500-600 words each. All that adds up to around 4200 words a week. Not to mention, we have our placements and the three classes per week last for 3.5 hours each. At this point, the trips designed to de-stress had become more work rather than relaxation.

Lemon

All of that workload really took a toll on all of us. However, this creates a sense of mutuality between us; we got through it together, in the end we bonded through our mutual view toward the  amount of work.  Lacking sleep and free time, we naturally made time for self-recovery or calling family members (when the WiFi wass working) rather than socialising during the short breaks we have.

During my stay here, there was a day when all I wanted to do was go home. This is the thing about these kind of days: you might have finished all your work already (I did), it might have been an easy day (it was), but you’re homesick. At that time, I couldn’t call home because it was 5pm here, which means it’s midnight back at home in Indonesia. Other people seem fine and I couldn’t relate with their smiley demeanour. On days like this, I made sure I was  well-fed (not eating will make you more grumpy!) and call it a day early. I’m the type of person who feels better listening to a mellow song, so I played one and go to bed. It happens, but like the WiFi breakdowns at our hotel, it doesn’t last forever!

Finally, don’t think badly of yourself when this happens. Some people need to rant when this happens, some people call home, some people have their own karaoke session, some go to sleep, but for all cases the good lemonade will finally out spill the bad lemonade in good time.

(Thanks to my friends for giving me some space instead of being nosy at that time and especially Maria for being my hand model for this post)