Confessions of an Undisguised Drama Queen

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Right Advice, Wrong Choice?

Today's a good day for me because I didn't have to go to school. Actually, I was still in school, mugging away in the library, but I was spared of the torture of having to attend lessons at SBS (not the bus company lah. school of biological sciences).

It just zaps all the happiness inside me whenever I walk into that cold building - there's nothing that I look forward to at all. I don't have many friends in my faculty (as I've said many times, everyone's pretty much a mugger there) and it really puts me off to see a stressed look on every face I meet. It's so darn competitive and stifling there that I've lost the passion and interest in my work since I don't know when. Shouldn't learning be something enjoyable and enriching? Then why is it that I feel like it's such a cut-throat environment there where no one really bothers about you unless you are the rare top 1%, which unfortunately ONLY includes the PRC scholars.

Sometimes I wonder if my mum was right. Since my secondary school days, she's looked upon my choice of subjects with disdain - she's always wanted me to do arts and humanities like literature but I stuck to doing science. She kept saying that I'm not cut up for science and am more inclined towards the arts. I did like to write (and still do) and would draw to past time. But I could never picture myself not studying science. I loved it. It was my passion. The arts were more of a hobby.

Still, I carried on with my choice, taking triple science all the way till college. And as I got busy with my other activities, my grades slipped and my mum actually suggested that I stop school and enrol in LaSelle to study art and design. "That's what you should do. You're the arts person, not the science person." she would say. But I never took her words to consideration. I was too angry with her for not being supportive to sit down and think of the alternative possibilities.

So I studied really hard for my A levels and got really good grades. I think that convinced her that I can do well, if I wanted to. So she stopped asking me to go into arts.

Then it was time to choose a course in the university. I've always wanted to study veterinary medicine and without informing my parents, I went ahead to apply for all the 4 australian universities that offered the course. I was crossing my fingers that my scholarship application for the course would be successful. Alas, I got a place in all 4 unis but a rejection letter for the scholarship. I finally told my parents about my applications with the hope that they might be able to finance my overseas education but I had reached a dead end. My parents simply couldn't afford it (that's the thing with having so many children. there's never enough to go around).
I was devastated.

So I just chose the next closest thing and started to create a nightmare for myself. Maybe if I had listened to my mum and went into arts I'd be enjoying myself at school. I would look forward to lessons and I will take more pride in my work.

But I guess there no room for "what ifs". I just gotta try to make the best of the current situation.

[Time of Confession] 10:31 PM
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