wakeupandescape

I'd been waiting for the movie to come out since I saw the trailer and then bookmarked the trailer on youtube just so I could watch it EVERYDAY until the movie screened on Friday. It's about a girl, and education, duh. Simply put it was life vs university in a very literal sense and that doesn't do the movie justice, but that's how I was relating to it anyway. Every so often I get really conflicted and confused, wondering if this is really where I should? want? ought to be. Warwick is the correct decision for me, but was it what I wanted? I made a new friend on Friday, a Singaporean doing postgrad English and he made me feel so, inadequate. He LOVES literature and loves English and he wants to go on to do more degrees so he can finally have 2 masters' degrees in English and Theological Studies. He has so much passion for what he's reading it makes me jealous. I wish I were interested and passionate about something so I wouldn't be stuck at a point. It's not even a rut, it's a POINT. Like a blimp on a discontinuous function HAHA.

So yeah that's the gist of why I'd been looking forward to An Education - I was hoping it'd give me an answer, and it did. It wasn't what I was expecting..no, I really didn't expect much. I tried not to think of it much after watching the trailer because I just wanted to be handed the answer on a silver plate, so when the answer finally came I was like, alright. Okay. I intended to watch the movie alone - I even bought the ticket alone - because if I were in Singapore I'd watch it with Alan or Hong Chen but obv they aren't here, and I don't know anybody whom I would really want to watch this movie with, that I had such high expectations for. In the end my hallmate watched the trailer and she went and decided to buy a ticket and she's nice and not like I minded but I was actually really looking forward to watching a movie alone for the first time ^^" I wish I were sitting alone in the cinema when the movie ended and the credits were rolling so I could just SOAK IN the ultimatum of the movie and ponder over it while everyone left me behind, but no, I left once the movie ended, quickly and abruptly like other movie-goers, and DID NOT GET TO SOAK AND PONDER. So I had to do it in my room last night. Not that I resent my hallmate's company, honestly but I just needed time to think. Movies are important to me hehe.


So, SPOILER ALERT. The girl is about to take her As and honestly has a chance of going to Oxford and everyone thinks she's definitely going to get it, then along comes this interesting, mysterious and charming man who sweeps her off her feet to PARIS so she finds love and fun in life and thinks, what's the point of going to Oxford?

For me it's, I kind of liked my life, I found love. I could use more fun in life, more passion for life and more interests and exciting things to do, but what is the point of university? Why do I need that degree just to move on further? I honestly didn't think it was important; I forgot the reasons why I'd signed a contract and flown thousands of miles halfway round the world to come to this strange place to study something I don't even love. I wanted an answer and there was nobody I could really ask. Along came the movie.



She quit school before the As.

I felt hopeful. If she quit school and still got a happy ending with love and passion for life, I was SO OUT OF HERE. I wouldn't care if I had one million people to answer to, to pay money back to, I would work with my own hands, I would save up, I would walk if I had to, to see the rest of the world. Come on, they didn't have planes til the 20th Century and people STILL GOT TO TRAVEL AROUND THE WORLD BEFORE THAT. So yes. I would WALK if I had to, I am not leaving this world without seeing Africa and South America and Mt Everest and more.



She was going to marry him. Life was going to be perfect.

Simplistic and naive as that sounds - sometimes that's all people want right, just to be HAPPY? We all have different expectations. I know for some people they NEED a first class honours degree they NEED a high-paying job they NEED high social standing they NEED the cars the house the husband everything to know how much they're worth, or to show the world how much they're worth. I'm sorry but I don't subscribe to that, maybe because I'm scared of competition, maybe because I just got sick of competition but I don't want to ever compete and compare again. I just want to find love, more love, and know more people, know more things, see more places, do more things.

We're all looking for something. ---sorry i happened to be listening to me, you & my medication by blg HAHA NOT MY PLAYLIST OKAY.



He betrayed her, abandoned her. She was left with nothing. No more love, no more passion for life, no fun, no university degree and nowhere to go, nothing to do.

AMAZING WHAT THESE FILMS DO. Possibly commissioned by some Higher Education Propagandist huh! So yeah, that was the answer the movie gave me. That, if ever I lost everything (what little I have), even if I didn't love what I was studying (girl in movie DID really want to read English at Oxford), a university degree was going to let me do more things.

I still don't know how to interpret that really and I still don't fully grasp the concept of it, but all I got was that, I am stuck at this point in my life. I don't have an aim, or a goal, I don't have a purpose or a mission yet (hmm I probably ought to go back and read my scholarship essays about my future and shit to get a reminder) but even more importantly, I don't have a real interest. I don't know what I would do if I didn't come here and be force-fed economic theories and equations and then made to regurgitate them in assignments and essays. It's not what I love, but I'll make do. I don't mind economics.

Maybe that was what my mom meant when she didn't let me take a gap year. She knew all this beforehand - that if I took a gap year to 'find myself' I would just get even more lost. I'm not saying that's gonna be the way for everyone, but I think that would have happened to me. DAMN, MOM DOES ALWAYS KNOW BEST. Good thing she doesn't know I'm writing this.



At the end of the day, at the end of the movie, the girl went on to Oxford. She went and joined hundreds of other bespectacled, pimply ugly school kids who had never experienced life before, and blended in perfectly. Nobody knew her background, nobody knew what she had been through, the love she had and the life she loved.



This may sound obnoxious and arrogant, but I feel like I can identify with that. HONG CHEN YOU'RE GOING TO GAG READING THIS but I think I've found pretty awesome love. It's crazy, the things we've done and been through, it's ridiculous how self-destructive I can get when we fight because it just burns straight down to my core when we don't get along and I just don't know how I'd get along with anybody else who doesn't have the history like we do. We were crazily stupid and we're still kind of crazy in some ways but at least we're grown up now. I feel like I've come to this, not boring, but just this big huge SCHOOL and I feel like I've done so much more and gone through so much more than some people that I deserve to SKIP UNIVERSITY and just move forward in life. I warned you that I was gonna sound arrogant.



The end of the movie was like, her new boyfriend asked her to go to Paris with him!, and she said, 'I'd love to!', as if she had never been.

I think it's so cool that we went to Paris together already, and even though it was with my mom and aunt as well, at least we walked UP Champs-Elysees ourselves and climbed the L'arc de Triomphe together. And even though we were fighting half the way up the Eiffel Tower because YOU WOULDN'T SLOW DOWN FOR ME, WTF OKAY DO YOU REMEMBER HOW HIGH IT WAS / HOW MANY BLOODY FLIGHTS OF STAIRS THERE WERE, at least we finished together. I think no matter how this ends, it was all in all a good run.

Oh and of course I don't think that I'M the only one who's gone through things and really known love, I'm sure almost everybody feels the same way too, that they don't deserve to be here, they ought to be elsewhere, climbing mountains and touching the sky, and that's what makes the world so strange. I think if thoughts were free, think perfect knowledge, but everybody could read and hear and know everybody else's thoughts, the world would be a lot simpler. In the sense that we'd think of ourselves less. There wasn't a point to this. Just saying!


OKAY THIS WAS, AS USUAL, FRAGMENTED AND DISJOINTED, HAPHAZARD TO THE MAXXXX. Just gonna say bye right here.

GOODNIGHT!