Why must be Chinese restaurant?

I've started school after 3 months of break. The bad news for me is that I am fairly rusty, since I haven't done any formal philosophy in 3 months. The good news is that I feel fairly recharged. I've been to school a fair number of times this holidays - probably an average of once per week - for various reasons. I like going back to schools during holidays, the contrast between noise and quiet becomes starker. A pity the contrast cuts both ways.

A number of people have encouraged me to do my Master's overseas. With such vigor, I must add, that sometimes I can't help but feel they are really just imposing their own desires on me. After all, what's not to like of the idea of a new place to visit, to travel around, to lead a free, independent life, to engage with minds from different countries, and so on.

I once said I would write a detailed exposition of the pros and cons of doing it locally versus doing it overseas. Yes, I do remember things I said I would do; it is extremely rare to have me forget them, though maybe not so rare to have me not do them. I wanted to do that because I had thought it was quite an interesting dilemma with each option balancing the other out very nicely - definitely one of the finest dilemmas I've had to face in life so far. But then I spoke to 4 professors. The recommendation for each was unequivocal: take up the local offer. I was convinced by their points, I took up the local offer, and as time passed my motivation to make a detailed account of the situation waned as well.

Let me, however, now make a few points of this faded dilemma.  We first note the dilemma was, strictly speaking, never between a local uni versus an overseas one. It had always been between rejecting the local offer, trying my hand at applying at various overseas universities, and re-applying to my local university if I don't get what I want from the overseas universities; versus simply taking up the local offer. The former option would see me having 1 year of free time but also gives me the risk of not securing the same desirable conditions in my local offer. Now, one might think that risk is pretty low. To be honest, that's what I thought also. So, given that I would enjoy a year of free time, I might as well go for the former route. But then it struck me that a) the chances of getting a bond-free scholarship for a Master's degree overseas is incredibly low and b) it's questionable if the benefits of a Master's far outweigh the costs of application in the first place, such that they justify the second route. (The cost of application also includes the risk of not being able to secure the same desirable conditions when I re-apply for my local university the following year).

The heart of the matter is that I might very well end up spending time and effort applying for an overseas Master's for an incredibly low chance of getting in with a scholarship, and for a programme that may very well be not that significantly better than NUS' anyway. On the other hand, given that the chances of rescuring my local offer the following year should my overseas bid fails is very low, why not just try?

The dilemma got dissolved when my professors reaffirmed my belief that it's doubtful if an overseas Master's programme far outstrips a local one - especially if we entertain the thought that the more prestigious the university is, the higher the chance one would get sidelined by the Phd students. And if one is not going to go for a well-established, prestigious university then why not just do it locally?  Importantly, too, the ex-Head of Department had told me in a roundabout way that funding for both the department and the faculty is sparse and is likely to get worse the following year, which meant the cost of overseas applications got higher. Of course, that might very well have been tactical bait; but it's still bait I can't afford to ignore.

One last thing. It has often been pointed out that an overseas education would broaden one's horizon and generally stimulate one's intellectual growth. I don't dispute that. But I have always found that such considerations hold little sway over me. I would like to think myself a highly independent learner and thinker; in fact, I enjoy being so. Thus, even if we grant that an overseas education does indeed promote one's intellectual growth, I don't see how the slight increase in gains would significantly motivate me to take the former route. The debate here would really be about how much an increase in benefits I would gain - right now, I only see it as slight. I view this as slight especially since this is just a Master's, which I view really as a way to boost my portfolio for a Phd. What's essential for that is not an overseas university, but the right kind of focus.

Note here that I have not talked about the non-academic costs and benefits. Since I am not as disenchanted with Singapore and not as enchanted with other countries as one might be, this aspect of the dilemma doesn't really factor significantly for me.

This is an exciting and dangerous new period for me. It's exciting because there's potentially a lot of things I can accomplish with my time. It's dangerous because 2 years isn't exactly a lot of time, given the slow rate I do things. At the end of 2 years, I either get to further my studies or I get consigned to the tepid tedium of an ordinary, everyday job. We shall see.

These are exciting times also because people I know are moving on in their lives. My social circle has always been pretty simple: it consists of 1 group and a sprinkling of individuals. A number of people in that group would be overseas for some period of time. Individuals I know are also gradually lost to natural attrition, or because they too have relocated overseas. This is nothing new, people have been coming in and drifting away in my life as far as I can remember, leaving only the occasional dinner to remind us we shared something more. We are shooting off in a number of directions, all of us. Years down the road we should have a meal in a Chinese restaurant and complain about everything under the sun.