Echoing What’s Important To You

Seeing television advertisements can be fun. Same goes for hearing ads on the radio. Being the brains behind these ads could be much of a challenge, but it’s rewarding. After all, the concept is such that part of the revenue from the sale of any product would go to advertising costs. And if the ad is catchy enough, you’re in for a windfall.

Would you believe us…

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Truly, it has been a while since I left school. But whenever my friends mention the names of the new prefects while talking to me, I cannot help but smile. Mention prefect election in SMK Convent Bukit Nanas (my dear old school turned cluster school!) and one would picture it to be a solemnity with candles, long cloaks, etc. No. For as long as I can remember, prefect election was, is and always will be democratic, minus the politics. Every year, it takes place in August – short-listing is done a month before. I was never a prefect in school (I kept on rejecting the post because I did not want my meetings to clash with my study time). However, I still know how things were done because I partook in the process, like everyone else.

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I have a sister who studied interior design, but now works in a travel agency. My younger brother finished SPM earlier this year, and refuses to continue studying; he said he didn’t know what to study anyway. A friend of mine switched from full time studying, part time working to part time studying, full time working. He’s earning about 2K per month now.

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It took me a while to ponder upon this because I wanted it to be something which matters a lot to the youth. Here, I write my two cents’ worth on what has been familiar to the animal kingdom, and more specifically, to the human race: competition. Competition is a game of survival, and it has long existed with the cliche that one has to lose and one has to win. Where humanity is concerned, competition can be used to empower, or it can be used to humiliate and degrade.

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Do you still remember one of the English poems we used to learn in our secondary school years - The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost? Well, I like the poem, especially the first two lines:

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

Sorry I can’t travel both.”

Yes, two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I CAN’T travel both. The traveler in the poem was really lucky to only have two choices- the left path and the right path, but in reality, we, especially the students, are always given more than two choices, and sometimes making a decision is not easy.

A typical student will at least experience three diverged paths, and each of these paths can be represented as…

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Do you remember the joy of going to school?

The joy of seeing multiple A’s on your transcript and how exclusive you felt when you know unlike many, you’ve worked hard for them?

Seven. Eight. Ten. Oh, wait, those are regular figures now. Twelve. Sixteen. Seventeen. Twenty-one. The number of A’s and the number of attempted subjects increase as the years pass. However, when we look at the two students who have obtained 17A’s and 21A’s respectively, two things come to mind : the results may either overwhelm us, or make us get turned off by the idea of SPM scoring. Ever since the results day, everyone has been taking the “number-of-A’s” issue with a pinch of salt. And so have I.

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When I first started with the History Syllabus in Form 1, there was a chapter entitled “History and Us”. This was to be the introduction to everything about the past. With that came the clichéd expression, the all-famous tagline which somewhat “explains” the true meaning of History :

“History enables to know ourselves, our origins and our country. History also becomes an example by which we live our lives.”

An example by which we live our lives, MY FOOT !

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Immediately when my SPM Moral and History papers were over, I heaved a sigh of relief. Making it through both these papers was something ! Now, I am stuck in college, with a Malaysian Studies book from Oxford Fajar, cursing the Lembaga Akreditasi Negara (LAN) for making it a compulsion rather than a voluntary act, and having to do the same thing over and over again. Well, I don’t see the point as to why Malaysian Studies and Moral Studies have been made compulsory in private varsities and colleges, but I’d go through those sickening three hours in class - and complain.

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Ten years ago (or maybe more), the newspapers heralded a girl named Sufiah as a math prodigy, a whiz kid, a genius, whatnot ? She was the darling of the teachers, the object of envy of many students around her, the top scorer with everything handed to her on a silver platter - including scholarships from top universities.

Today, people think her image is tarnished. But well, looks like she’s taking revenge on the world for all that pressure, by living the life she wants.

Mes amis, I speak of why child prodigies should be let to grow at their own pace.

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Having been through the first three examinations - PTS (Penilaian Tahap Satu), UPSR (Ujian Pencapaian Sekolah Rendah) and PMR (Penilaian Menengah Rendah - Lower Certificate Examination), I daresay, I have been through a lot. To be honest, I would never ever want to relive the dreadful past of having to study over and over again, suffer mockery, beatings and not-so-satisfactory results. Despite the fact that I have done well in these three examinations, I would never want to go through them ever again. The students themselves - the young ones - dread the fact that they have to go through a major examination against millions of other Malaysian students.

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