Jesse Schlienkamp – UWC South East Asia

“I have to go to service and finish 4 essays first”

A year ago one of my senior told me that this year would fly by and be done so quickly that I would hardly notice it. I laughed at the idea and told her that I was sure it would be just like any other year in my life. In the first weeks it was very relaxing and I was just acclimatizing to the incredibly heat and vastness of Singapore Then, in the second week the activities started kicking in. Suddenly I was busy every day doing various activities during, and after school. Now that was fine for only the second week. Then in the third week the teachers started dishing out their homework. IB had arrived.. It felt like I woke up about half a year later in the middle of my first year. I was doing two activities a day and writing three essays, and two lab reports every day. Academic workload was intense, and so were the activities. Student council on Wednesday and Friday, Service on Wednesday, Gym and Science Club on Tuesdays. There was hardly any free time left and my time was zipping by. Now, as I reflect on my first year at UWCSEA I can look back at a year with amazing achievements in both the amount of activities, and the amount of workload I coped with. UWC has extended my boarders and raised the boundaries of my challenges even higher. I look back at my life before UWC and think that I hardly did anything all day. 

But compared to a life at UWC I think everybody does hardly anything all day...

Thank you for this great experience.