Sleep just would not come to my wretched mind last night.
I spent three hours tossing and turning in bed until 5am when I very well knew that I had a meeting scheduled in four hours time with my thesis supervisor.
There was only one thing that kept running thru my mind.
Ironically, I strangely yearned that it was her that kept me awake. Alas, my fluttering heart has stop beating in the absence of her and things that matter in life are slowly reclaiming their rightful unskewed perspectives.
I want the National Championship. I have lost alot of sleep on this over the past three years. It is the one thing that I deem to be succintly desirable to underline my self worth in life.
Everyone places a certain intangible value upon things that they do in life, the highest value accorded to the activity out of which we believe to be self defining. A farmer would toil thru the hottest sun and endure the hardship of his effort being scorned by immercurial behavior of land and seasons; hoping to produce that one corn harvest of highest quality in which he could take pride. To the rest of the world, his effort and life may seem trivial but to him, farming corn is the one thing that matters most in his life simply because he is a corn farmer, and that is what he does and has the ability to do best.
I am a student. My life is defined by my academic achievements. Or rather, that was how things used to be. I lost the sense of importance that academic excellence used to exude when I no longer see the challenge of getting good grades and the worth of getting them.
Partially to be blamed is the Malaysian tertiary education institution's lackadasical and anachronistic approach towards higher education. It does not mean anything for a student to get an A except to validate the fact that he is great when it comes to regurgitating facts that he memorized the fuck out of the textbook a week prior to the exams. We put too much effort in the anachronistic examination-based system yet we do with much less enthusiasm.
I answered only THREE out of a compulsory FIVE examination questions in one of the toughest paper last semester and managed a respectable A- for that course; I repeated the same bullshit for the next 6 papers and still ended up on the Dean's List which was supposed to congratulate my determination and effort in the pursuit of Civil Engineering knowledge that I did not even realized I had put in. Honestly, I put in more effort scouring the club directory for the best place to hold my birthday party than I did studying last semester.
How do I always seem to do that? Thanks to the miracle of Malaysian university grade graph curving! Let's face it. Most Malaysian students are dumbfucks who only know how to waste their time playing stupid lame ass computer games called the Days of the Ancient (DotA).
The point is I am a student, I don't have to study till the last two days before my exams and I will still be a great student because I know I am just That Great. Fuck Academia. No one is going to look at my grades when I start working anyway, notwithstanding the fact that my grades are very respectable.
Which was why I lost sleep.
Academia no longer defines my life.
I need that National Championship to validate my existence as a University Debater. I have been debating for at least 3 years now and this is my final year in college. It is now or never. I need to live up to the pressure of expectations and perform.
My debate team clearly has problems. We are not competitive enough to the extent that I feel people has some sort of a defeatist mentality. There is interest in debating, there is a respectable amount of commitment, there is definitely a high level of potential; but we lack Vision and Passion to be a successful team.
People do not believe that they can do it. People do not believe that they can be Great. People do not see the rainbow at the end of the road therefore they are not putting in the extra effort in charting the course to get there.
There has been some new interest in the team. Alot of new comers has arrived, some stuck around, some gone the next day. The arrival of these dreamy eyed new breed of potential debaters only validates one thing: I need to take the lead. I will not let down any of these wonderful new people who came seeking for another perspective in their mundane Malaysian university life. I kicked some mean asses in the U.S. and I do not believe I am not able to repeat my debating feat here.
The team needs to see the possibility of Greatness and the intangible rewards that comes with being a great orator. They need someone to prove to them that they could be great and show them the way to get there. Yet, in the end of the day, it also needs to be a collective effort, One visionary team working together with shared Passion towards a common goal.
And that is to be the last team standing to lift the National Championship's trophy come November 2006.
Great leaders are great because they have the ability to recognize a problem, break it down and then work thru microscopic level to achieve macro results.
And we could all do that with much Focus.
And believe that we could all be living our wildest dreams if only we start Believing.
Why am I obsessed with being #1 at all times? I do not believe I suffer from the usual bout of male ego inferiority complex issues. Rather, I have always believed that in no matter what we do, we need to give in our 120% effort. All resources, all effort, all means have to be exhausted in all courses of our actions. Life is short. We can't be spending half our lives half-assing thru our days.
The greatest moment of one's life is not in winning, although that is certainly a major booster of a feel good factor, but rather to look back at any moment of our lives and to be able to breathe a sigh of peaceful relief, fully accepting that we have done our best, and things could not have been better within our control.
That is what I want come graduation day May 2006. To know that I could not have done better. That I have indeed lived my college days to the fullest. And giving up everything for debating glory in the next 6 months is how I intend to seek my point of peaceful self validation.
This will be the Best year in the history of Universiti Sains Malaysia Debating Union. I will personally see to that.
I spent three hours tossing and turning in bed until 5am when I very well knew that I had a meeting scheduled in four hours time with my thesis supervisor.
There was only one thing that kept running thru my mind.
Ironically, I strangely yearned that it was her that kept me awake. Alas, my fluttering heart has stop beating in the absence of her and things that matter in life are slowly reclaiming their rightful unskewed perspectives.
I want the National Championship. I have lost alot of sleep on this over the past three years. It is the one thing that I deem to be succintly desirable to underline my self worth in life.
Everyone places a certain intangible value upon things that they do in life, the highest value accorded to the activity out of which we believe to be self defining. A farmer would toil thru the hottest sun and endure the hardship of his effort being scorned by immercurial behavior of land and seasons; hoping to produce that one corn harvest of highest quality in which he could take pride. To the rest of the world, his effort and life may seem trivial but to him, farming corn is the one thing that matters most in his life simply because he is a corn farmer, and that is what he does and has the ability to do best.
I am a student. My life is defined by my academic achievements. Or rather, that was how things used to be. I lost the sense of importance that academic excellence used to exude when I no longer see the challenge of getting good grades and the worth of getting them.
Partially to be blamed is the Malaysian tertiary education institution's lackadasical and anachronistic approach towards higher education. It does not mean anything for a student to get an A except to validate the fact that he is great when it comes to regurgitating facts that he memorized the fuck out of the textbook a week prior to the exams. We put too much effort in the anachronistic examination-based system yet we do with much less enthusiasm.
I answered only THREE out of a compulsory FIVE examination questions in one of the toughest paper last semester and managed a respectable A- for that course; I repeated the same bullshit for the next 6 papers and still ended up on the Dean's List which was supposed to congratulate my determination and effort in the pursuit of Civil Engineering knowledge that I did not even realized I had put in. Honestly, I put in more effort scouring the club directory for the best place to hold my birthday party than I did studying last semester.
How do I always seem to do that? Thanks to the miracle of Malaysian university grade graph curving! Let's face it. Most Malaysian students are dumbfucks who only know how to waste their time playing stupid lame ass computer games called the Days of the Ancient (DotA).
The point is I am a student, I don't have to study till the last two days before my exams and I will still be a great student because I know I am just That Great. Fuck Academia. No one is going to look at my grades when I start working anyway, notwithstanding the fact that my grades are very respectable.
Which was why I lost sleep.
Academia no longer defines my life.
I need that National Championship to validate my existence as a University Debater. I have been debating for at least 3 years now and this is my final year in college. It is now or never. I need to live up to the pressure of expectations and perform.
My debate team clearly has problems. We are not competitive enough to the extent that I feel people has some sort of a defeatist mentality. There is interest in debating, there is a respectable amount of commitment, there is definitely a high level of potential; but we lack Vision and Passion to be a successful team.
People do not believe that they can do it. People do not believe that they can be Great. People do not see the rainbow at the end of the road therefore they are not putting in the extra effort in charting the course to get there.
There has been some new interest in the team. Alot of new comers has arrived, some stuck around, some gone the next day. The arrival of these dreamy eyed new breed of potential debaters only validates one thing: I need to take the lead. I will not let down any of these wonderful new people who came seeking for another perspective in their mundane Malaysian university life. I kicked some mean asses in the U.S. and I do not believe I am not able to repeat my debating feat here.
The team needs to see the possibility of Greatness and the intangible rewards that comes with being a great orator. They need someone to prove to them that they could be great and show them the way to get there. Yet, in the end of the day, it also needs to be a collective effort, One visionary team working together with shared Passion towards a common goal.
And that is to be the last team standing to lift the National Championship's trophy come November 2006.
Great leaders are great because they have the ability to recognize a problem, break it down and then work thru microscopic level to achieve macro results.
And we could all do that with much Focus.
And believe that we could all be living our wildest dreams if only we start Believing.
Why am I obsessed with being #1 at all times? I do not believe I suffer from the usual bout of male ego inferiority complex issues. Rather, I have always believed that in no matter what we do, we need to give in our 120% effort. All resources, all effort, all means have to be exhausted in all courses of our actions. Life is short. We can't be spending half our lives half-assing thru our days.
The greatest moment of one's life is not in winning, although that is certainly a major booster of a feel good factor, but rather to look back at any moment of our lives and to be able to breathe a sigh of peaceful relief, fully accepting that we have done our best, and things could not have been better within our control.
That is what I want come graduation day May 2006. To know that I could not have done better. That I have indeed lived my college days to the fullest. And giving up everything for debating glory in the next 6 months is how I intend to seek my point of peaceful self validation.
This will be the Best year in the history of Universiti Sains Malaysia Debating Union. I will personally see to that.
2 Comments:
Though i was one of the ones "gone the next day", i hope you manage to succeed in reaching your goal.
Replying here in case you dont read it there:
YEah me too...But Time would not permit it i'm afraid,cruel creature...
And sure i'll tell Annette, tho calling her old girl is pretty much sucide and she just might shoot the messenger! =p
She comes up to Penang once in a while, next time she comes up i'll let you know so you can meet up with her or something. Didnt know you knew her, but then again its a small world.
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