pelf-ism is contagious

Yesterday afternoon, I received an envelope containing a short hand-written letter, a postcard and a hand-made card from Auli, a 44-year-old grandmother from Finland. Yes, she’s only 44 but she has a granddaughter aged 4!

The postcard, she says, shows a typical summer lake view in Finland, which is also dubbed “the Land of 1000 Lakes.” Which reminded me of the “Land of Big Roundabouts with Long Names” post that I had written but accidentally deleted *sniffs*

And she made the flower card herself, with a little help from her copy machine, which I assume is a printer :))

And since she took so much trouble to make the pretty flower card, I will send her a surprise postcard in return. And no, no prizes for correctly guessing what card I’m going to send her *winks*

Let me show you something before somebody starts to flame me for the earlier post I wrote on how some students really should be thankful to be offered a place in the public university and that they should not make a big fuss out of nothing because there are a lot more students who are sufferring in silence. These are the students who did not manage to get into a public university. What is worse is that the majority of these students cannot afford private tertiary education.

I do not normally blow my own trumpet, but I thought maybe what I had written over 4 years ago could be a source of motivation to students who had been offered a course which is not their choice.

I have no idea who submitted the article to doctorjob.com.my but anyway, I am reproducing it here:

Making the best of things

I CAN’T recall exactly when the news broke out that we could check our applications to local universities on the Internet, but I can remember every other detail vividly. I’d like to share my experience with the thousands of students who are currently waiting for admission into local universities.

I was on my way home after sending my sister for tuition when a Form 6 friend of mine called. I couldn’t answer the phone as I was driving. I returned his call when I got home, thinking that he only wanted to chat with me. That was when he told me that the results of our applications were out. Then he told me that I would be sent to Terengganu.

I thought, at first, he was joking but he sounded serious and asked if I actually applied for Marine Biology in Kolej Universiti Terengganu (KUT). My heart was pounding fast, I almost stopped breathing. After saying goodbye, I thanked him for informing me and hung up.

I nervously flipped through that day’s newspaper for the website address. Found it! I quickly logged on to the page, keyed in my IC number and pressed the “Submit” button. My heart sank when the new page was displayed. Before I knew it, tears started rolling down my cheeks. Terengganu? Marine Biology?

Terengganu is far, no doubt. Far from home and friends in Malacca and far from relatives in Ipoh. And “Marine Biology”? I asked myself over and over again. I couldn’t even swim, let alone dive and work in the sea. How was I supposed to go about it? I disconnected and called my aunt in Ipoh. I started crying before I could utter a word. After quite some time I finally told her what had happened.

She listened patiently to my complaints and then, being ever so supportive, suggested that I take up the course first and appeal to switch to another course after one semester. She also suggested that I make a trip to UPM Serdang to file an appeal.

The next few days seemed like an eternity. Though I was eager to go to university, I was also wondering if I should take up something else, something that was my choice. I searched through the papers, but I couldn’t find any private institution offering “Food Science & Nutrition”. I wrote countless e-mails to the person-in-charge at KUT, asked them about the course, the syllabus, the career options available after graduation and also scores of other questions. Unfortunately, none of the questions were answered. When I finally got the offer letter from KUT, I called them personally.

Questions about the course still remained unanswered, but I did find out more about the hostel as well as transportation in Kuala Terengganu. I knew I had to make up my mind as soon as possible and proceed with life. I knew I couldn’t continue �grieving� about the fact that I was sent to Terengganu. And I decided to give myself a chance. A chance to take life’s unpredictable turns and live with it.

My uncle drove my Mum and me to KT as my father was out of town. We reached a day earlier and I tried my best to familiarisze myself with the roads and the landmarks in KT. We found our way to KUT the next morning, at about 8am, in time to register myself. Banners were put up to welcome the new undergraduates. Many people were at the registration area, parents and grandparents, siblings and other family members. A canopy was prepared for the parents and another one for students queuing up to complete the registration.

I was making new friends even when I was queuing up! And in less than 30 minutes, I met a few girls from Penang, as well as a coursemate who happened to be my roommate. After completing the registration, I went to get my room key and filled up more forms. The next few days were spent with my two roommates, an Indian from KL and a Chinese from Penang. We did practically everything together. Orientation was very tiring but fun. That was when we got to know our coursemates as well as our seniors. The seniors were very nice people, well, at least they didn’t make us kiss the pipe or get the cutest boy’s phone number.

After the four-day orientation, classes finally started. There were some “funny” and “weird” classes in our first semester, or so we thought. I’d never thought of doing Aquatic Botany or Aquatic Ecology in class. The lecturers were friendly and we got along quite well. We even had a few field trips where we worked outside the class. We went to Pantai Chendering to collect some algae and to Taman Pertanian Negeri Sekayu to do some water sampling.

I’d never exchange those wonderful moments in my life for any other things. And how could I ever forget our “course orientation” where we had to swim about 50-100m out into the sea (it’s the South China Sea, mind you) towards a boat. We had to get up the boat and some seniors were there to teach us how to jump off the boat. After jumping, we swam back to shore. It was a scary experience for some like myself who didn’t know how to swim but some boys did it twice, if not thrice. (I had to attend swimming lessons every Monday in the public pool in KT).

Classes were pretty much the same for the rest of the semester. We had assignments to hand in, there was a lot of reading to be done and I was glad that the library opened until midnight. There were also group projects where we learned to communicate with our coursemates. And there are, of course, scores of tests and exams we all dread.

The beach, which was about five minutes� walk from the hostel, was another thing that kept me going.

Staying in a new environment such as KT also meant that we had to explore the place. We made countless trips to the town, which is about 20 minutes from the hostel. For shopping, we would go to The Store; Chinatown was just across the street.

Life in Terengganu certainly wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The same applies to taking up a course that is not your choice. After the first semester, a few of my coursemates requested to switch to the courses of their choices. But I didn’t. I felt that I was already falling in love with what I was doing. In fact, I am now looking forward to taking up a Scuba diving license in a month�s time.

Finally, I believe that life is what we make of it.

Chen Pelf Nyok

So you see.. Things might not look favourable to you at this point of time, but things do change. And one of the reasons I “encouraged” Feli to come to KUSTEM is because I do not want her to waste an opportunity to pursue her tertiary education just because she is afraid of going to a place she has never been to before.

Remember how a couple of years ago, after the STPM results were announced, a lot of complaints were filed and some were lucky to have their complaints highlighted in the media, which subsequently landed them in the “prestigious” universities, with courses that they only dreamt of doing?

You don’t? I do..

Every year, there were cases where top scorers from Sam Tet who were not offered a place in UM to do Medicine. I cannot recall exactly which year it was, but there was once where about 15 top scorers were denied a place in the local universities and all of them appeared in the papers, expressing their disappointment in the government, bla bla bla..

After a week or two, the same top scorers again appeared in the papers, but this time, they were busy thanking the government for allocating them places to do Medicine/Engineering in the public universities. These students also promised that they would do very well in the university, and that they would certainly serve the government upon graduation, bla bla bla..

But wait a minute. Do you see a different trend this year?

There’s a top student who is offered to do Medicine in USM Kubang Kerian, but she prefers to do it in UM because she cannot bear to leave her depressive Mum in KL. Another top scorer expressed her disappointment for not being offered a place in UM but in UKM instead to do Medicine. So do I have something to say to these 2 girls? Yes.

Look, there are a lot of people who could not even get into university. So if you have been offered a place to do your dream course, does it really matter at which university you do it?! If your ambition is to become a doctor, does it really matter whether you graduated from UM or UKM?! And if everybody wants to go to UM, we might as well merge ALL universities in Malaysia - then everybody will graduate from UM la, good idea or not?! If you were NOT offered a place in UM, it could probably mean that there are a lot of people who did better than you in STPM, or it could also mean that you did not fill up the application form as cleverly as other people did. Period. Now go pack your luggage and toiletries and stationery and get ready to register yourself at the university!

And then there’s this boy who obtained 3As and 1B who was disappointed for not being offered a place to do Medicine. My advice? Just pack your luggage and do Biotech at UMS instead. UMS is a big and nice university and they have their own jetty too!!

And then there’s this student whose CGPA was 2.7 and she was grumbling that she was not offered a place to do Microbiology and Biology-related courses but a friend of hers whose CGPA was 2.5 was offered a place to do Microbiology. My advice? Get on with life, my dear. Things do not, and will not, always go according to our plans. Nothing is fair anyway, just look at your own fingers, they are NOT of the same length, are they?!

*sigh*