March 14, 2011

you should probably skip this ...

Hey ... wonder who am I greeting anyway.

It is the month of March already, and SPM results are coming out very soon. What am I expecting? Well, the dream is of course to achieve amazing results, followed by an array of prestigious scholarships, waiting for me to pick from and continue this life of smooth sailing till I step into the working society.

Ain't that an awesome dream?

Results will probably be ... average? I am not exactly the extremely hard-working student that gets the best results, nor am I a genius in any way. Sure, I am also not the 'average' student, but I do not see myself anywhere near being of what I consider as good.

Then again, there is also the horrifying possibility that my results would be less than expected ...

Being in college, once again, I feel the never-ending need of excelling. Let's face it, the chances of being the absolute best at something is close to zero, as there are only so many things one could be the best at but way too many contestants the competition. For me ... it's never good enough. Oh sure, I may have one of the best results in certain subjects, in my school, but it ends there. The cold and hard reality is that any other school could have a whole class that could easily defeat me in any sort of competition ... so what does that make me?

There's this Chinese saying, about not being able to compare with those better than me, but also being a lot better than those that are not as good as I am. As poorly translated as that was, it seems to encourage people to be contended with their lives. But really, what's the point of just being average? It's things like these that that makes me loathe competitiveness, but one could not live without competing. Sure, one might argue that a competition is never about winning, but it sucks to lose all the time!

I have always envied the Americans, because from what I notice from my limited exposure towards them, a lot of them seem to support their daily lives by doing things that they love, and are passionate for. That might not be the case for the majority of foreigners, but it seems that those life choices only exist in western countries. In Asian countries, particularly as a Chinese living in Malaysia, most career choices are based on what brings in the most cash, not so much on interest.

But then again, given the opportunity to do the thing I love ... well, I would be lost, since I do not know what exactly am I passionate for.

Till now, I have doubts about being an Actuary. One of the many reasons of choosing that as an answer to all those never-ending questions regarding what do I aspire to be, is it being somewhat related to maths, and it being one of the jobs with a high salary. A part of me wishes to polish my writing skills, hoping that I could write articles or books, but that again, faces tremendous challenges as I'm not a born writer and it seems as though my skills could never improve. Furthermore, I could NEVER picture myself writing for a living.

Okay, leaving that hanging, aside from academic stuff, there's also personality and leadership qualities to work on. The word leadership makes me nauseous. I personally despise the fact that every single one of us should be a person with the ability to lead, being in high spirits and all ... Why couldn't I be that shadowy character in novels that are not leaders but possesses an ability that separates me from the others? Why must I be a leader? Maybe I'm not seeing the big picture here, maybe I'm just not mature enough, or maybe I'm just not a leader. I guess I hate having to be someone that I am not meant to be ... Or maybe it's the quality of a leader that is somewhat condescending, far-to-reach and not-that-down-to-earth that seems to be the case for most of the time.

And the never-ending wall of pointless text goes on and on and on ...

I shall (hopefully) blog again, with thoughts that are much more organised ... as of now I only need some sort of an outlet to flush out some of them.
-Kritz