When I gave up my place in NUS Law to study Literature in the UK on a teaching scholarship, my father (a career teacher) tried to dissuade me from what he saw as a difficult profession with limited prospects. To assure my parents that I wasnt throwing my life away on a whim, I fibbed to my parents that teaching scholars have a shot at being Minister of Education one day. An early, made-up fable. A white-on-white lie. In my heart of hearts, I didnt really want to be Minister of Education (not then; certainly not now that I know more about whats really involved in public service and politics). Instead, I imagined that I might be given the opportunity, if I did well enough, to progress to an advanced, lifelong career in service and celebration of language and its imaginative possibilities. I was already a writer then, and wanted to make a life of it, however I could. There were no significant role models in Singapore for a writing life, save a neurosurgeon here, a lawyer there, a clutch of professors and educators in the news. Academia, it seemed to my 18-year-old self, was the only viable option, and teaching was close enough to make a sideways step down the road possible, even probable, if I did well enough in my studies. This was how I came to meet Professor Edwin Thumboo in the late 1990s. I was introduced to him by Ho Poh Fun, herself a teaching colleague and poet -- both to pay my respects to a veteran, and to explore the possibility of swapping over to the NUS English dept. I had obtained a credible 1st Class Honours degree; I had my first book out; I was within striking range, or so I was given to understand. I had to get a postgraduate degree of course. I had to get permission to have my scholarship bond transferred to NUS. I would not have been the first one to do so. I found the good Professor charming, warm, magisterial and deeply assured that he could get his way if he gave the word. Things didnt quite work out, of course. Not everyone gets their way all the time, or not for long. I found myself working in the Prime Ministers Office (Public Service Division), with a foot in the vaunted Administrative Service, considerations of an academic career deferred for many different reasons. Soon after, I found myself leaving the Civil Service for journalism, then to head a New Media team as part of an advertising and design outfit that my publisher was involved in. Here and there, this and that, trying to sustain the dream of a life built and fed on words that matter, picking at it from the sides. The search, rather than any destination, has become my life. Non, je ne regrette rien. The quest has brought me many friends and opportunities, including my current slate of relatively regular engagements, all to do with keeping words and ideas thoughtful and meaningful in the broader human sense. It has taken me over a decade to figure something out that could work and still take into account all that I am, everything I care about. 江湖 / maya / theatrum mundi has its binaries, polemics and other ingrained habits, but there is still space, it appears, to dart in between the giants astride the world. Once, when I had quite a few more books and other accomplishments under my belt, I was even invited to teach Creative Writing at NUS -- but the invitation was rescinded when it was realised that I did not in fact have a postgraduate degree as had been assumed. It remains a scab I pick at, this lack of paper, even though I know rationally it does not matter, should not matter. There is this nagging feeling that Im letting myself down. Many of my students and mentees of various stripes have PhDs now. Have I wanted to just go ahead and get an advanced degree, silence the voices? I imagined, once, that it was all I ever hoped to work towards. It is no longer an ambition. There are family, financial and other reasons both personal and practical. To be perfectly honest I am not sure if it is simple resignation or all the other sound rationalisations I tell myself and others. I can still write. I can still teach. I can still do what matters. This past week, I have been offered a solid contract to teach an Introduction to Writing Poetry for a semester at Yale-NUS, from Jan 2015. It isnt the first time Ive been asked to teach, nor to teach writing, but it is the first firm engagement that approaches what I once imagined my professional life to be, all those decades ago. This is how far we have come. I am breathless and anxious and sick with dread and desire. At 42, I am not so much self-made as self-making. Still making it up as I go along.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 04:25:14 +0000
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