I’m sorry to make light of these grave matters, but a colleague put it this way and I thought it was quite an interesting take: too much stress in NTU, too much partying in NUS. This is about the two student deaths that occurred this same week. A student at NTU was said to have stabbed his professor apparently after having lost his scholarship due to deteriorating grades then subsequently falling to his death, and an exchange student at NUS apparently passed away after having had too much to drink.
One is about stress, the other is about partying albeit only in his dorm room. It sounds like NUS is a fun place to be. Then again, exchange students are not your typical student. I tend to think of them as the “better” students who are taking a break. Just like professors have sabbaticals, the lucky students also have their overseas exchange programmes. Drinking at 5am in the morning? They must be very free. When I stayed in hostel, if I had been awake at 5am, it would have been because of rushing to meet project deadlines or something equally stressful.
This leads me to recall a recent news snippet I heard on our local morning radio programme about Beer Pong, a popular drinking game in US universities, about which a recent study from the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) stated had contributed to the spread of Herpes, Mono and other diseases. However, the CDC responded that they had not published such a study. (Yeah, but they did not deny carrying out such a study…)