The below is the inner dialogue of a university student in Singapore. He (or she?) is kind enough to share with Digital Senior.

 Week 1

 Yes, the new semester is here!! No more Suits, no more YouTube, no more anything that pulled down my grades last semester. Omg, I can’t believe I was still watching Suits one week before the final exams last sem. I must be crazy! This semester is different. It is a New Me!

Being a New Me, I need to do things differently. Yes, let’s disable the auto-log in function on YouTube, so next time when I feel tempted to watch videos, I have to go through the trouble of keying in that long password. Hopefully in the five seconds of logging in, my guilt would stop me from going deeper into the dark alley of video addiction.

 Now that I have cleaned myself up, I am all ready for classes. Got an 830 class? Never mind, no need to change the index. I should really sleep earlier and wake up earlier. Sleeping at 3am is just ridiculous. I want to see how Singapore is like at 7: 30 AM!

 Okay, now the lecture slides have been uploaded. Yes, I need go to the library to print all of them at one go. If I want to preview the chapter before I go for the actual class, wouldn’t it be easier if I could have all the slides ready right from the first week?

 Now I’m hungry. Oh yes, it’s lunch time. I should ask Joel for lunch. Wait, This guy likes to eat fast food, so did I. But this semester is a New Me, can I still have lunch with him?

 Instead, let me find Melissa who is a vegetarian. Her scolding of anyone who eats anything above the genre of vegetables should surely discipline me to go healthy.

Not only I want to eat healthy, I want to lose the weight that I gained in the last semester. Let me check out the sports CCAs on campus. Emm… Swimming looks not bad, but basketball looks more intense. How about fencing? That looks rather cool!

 I don’t realize there are so many interesting clubs on campus actually. So sad that I missed out so much fun last semester. Yes, I want to work hard and social hard too. So I probably need to sign up for those clubs and societies. Anyway membership is free right. I think the Singing Club looks interesting, so do the Welfare Service Club, Investment Club and Toastmaster Club. Anyway, membership is free right.

Yes, a New Me is in the making!

 Week 10

 Oh no, I slept through my alarm again! I put my phone at the other side of the room, and set three alarms, yet I overslept still!? Waking up at 730 seems so hard when you only sleep at 3. Probably it’s just too ambitious of me.

 Why did I register for 8am class!!?

How about 8:30 am class? Forget about it. Since I stopped going for the morning classes five weeks ago, what’s the point of going for one now. Anyone I may not be able to catch up with the lesson, so why not sleep a little bit more so I can have a more productive day later?

 But seriously, I think the school is unreasonable to set a class at 8:30 am. Probably I should write a feedback letter. But now, let me sleep a little bit more. Yeah, just five minutes probably.

 Great, now it’s 10:30. I can have my brunch. Who says one must wake up early? Waking up late saves the money for a meal a day. That amount times seven, it’s a lot!

 But eating aside, the more urgent thing now is for me to study, or rather to catch up with my studies. The notes that I printed at the start of the new semester are all over the place in my room. Never mind. Let’s just throw all of them away and start fresh!

 Having notes is not just enough. I need to watch lecture recording. This is one benefit of modern technology. I can always do my remote learning, even though the lecture theater is just five minutes’ walk away.

And I usually speed up the videos. It’s kind of funny to see how your professors talk when the speed is x2 and above. Interestingly I can still get their words, at least the key words. So let’s keep the speed up! A one hour lecture is done in half an hour. Amazing!

Wait, why this one got no lecture recording? Multivariate Regression. What’s that? Why the link is broken. Why are the IT people so irresponsible? Wait a second, what about this one? The image is there, but no sound! Am I supposed to know how to lip-read? I didn’t know that ability is a prerequisite for taking this module!

Okay, calm down, calm down. I still have my notes.  But the notes look so hard now! Am I reading English? The notes are not so brief and not well made at all! Lazy profs.

 Notes? Blah, blah, bleh..

 Never mind, why should I be angry with myself? Now I’m half way through the difficult lecture slides. I think I should reward myself for studying on my own. What’s better reward than watching a 5-minute short episode on YouTube? Click!

 Such a nice two hour movie, I think now I have rested enough. Let’s me go back to my lecture notes.

 But before that, let me reply the message from Jacob.

because I’m a facebook animal.

Oh yes, I’ve uninstalled Facebook and Twitter now. Too much time spent on them.

But I never reply the messages from my CCA friends who asked me to go for meeting A or event B. Too tired. My life has for enough trouble to deal with. But anyway I don’t have much regret for that, since their membership is free.

 I now promise myself to become a different person from next semester on wards. I really do.