Quote of the day:
“If you want your life to be more rewarding, you have to change the way you think.”
- Oprah Winfrey
It’s another quiet 1 AM here where I feel bored enough that I have to write something to get a couple of things off my mind. It’s been, as the post heading indicates, halfway through the year of 2011, and honestly, I feel quite misled and quite lost on a few things. Most of these “things” though, would be reflecting college life as it is.
It’s been almost 4 full months since my A-Levels started and really, it’s not as cut as I thought it would be. For starters, many people claim, or rather live, this statement: Education is necessary to succeed in life and probably to get a job while you’re at it. I personally believe that education is highly overrated despite what I have went through for the past 11 years of educational life. I admit, I am academic myself, but to base that education is the key root to everything in life is not a wise idea. For starters, A-Levels is pretty much a pain throughout these months. Could be the fact that I enrolled in the March, otherwise known as the express intake but then again, even though it’s been 4 months, I’ve yet to develop an idea of what I want or will be doing in the far future. Okay, chances are that I’ll be doing Mechanical Engineering as a degree program, but here comes the question in mind: Will it have synergy with whatever interests I have in the first place?
College life isn’t a privilege. As fun as that sounds, unless your decision is solid, one would be stuck with the massive decision-making throughout the possible 1 to 2 years of this phase. Directionless, misled, contrasts and conflicts, these are the few reasons to deter and stray you away from your original goal. True that I’ve mentioned in the previous paragraph, chances are that I’m doing Mechanical Engineering, but only because it sounds viable for me. Viable here only means I’m most capable of doing such a course and not any other courses. But again, conflicts arise. My interests lie in a few places. AKB48 will highly be referenced in this not because I’m obsessed with it, but only because it’s true.
Okay, first off, I took a year’s time of guitar lessons from the end of 2009 through 2010 up until the beginning of my SPM examinations. Obviously, academic people like me and not extra-curricular like others would not match well with anything that involves a “social hobby”, something I define as something people do regularly and is easily recognized in public. The whole point is, despite what nature I have, I place my interest in music, music creation, digital technology, information technology, graphics and imaging, and whatsoever related to whatever I just mentioned. So to crosscheck, did I choose A-Levels simply because it leads to a powerful degree? Or am I really being misled? I’m not following my interest and hence, not choosing properly.
True enough there is a strong debate between lucrativeness and interest. There isn’t a point to be doing whatever it is you are doing just because it’s fun. If it doesn’t grant you any decent salary or income, that particular thing you’re doing would be obsolete. That’s where the biggest cross comes in. Most people cannot even afford tertiary education. I’m not saying I don’t appreciate what my parents are doing for me, but it’s just at times, I wish I didn’t have to choose between such things. Moving back to the previous paragraph, I find myself using computers all the time. I cannot see myself not touching this Alienware M15x for at least once a day. Okay maybe there were a couple of days, but in the long run, technology is my forte, or it will be if I keep this up.
The next dispute is the choice of universities once the A-Levels is done with. My classmates are always around the block talking and discussing about which university to enroll in once the program is completed and what not. Meanwhile, I have the slightest idea of where to be going. The US? The UK? Japan? Australia? There is sure one heck of a gigantic list of countries, let alone universities, to choose from. As far as the A-Levels is concerned, it’s clear enough that UK would be the greatest option. Okay sure, UK is one of the most prestigious countries to be doing a degree program of any sort, but what about the culture there? It isn’t the same there and it would most certainly not feel like home. In fact, the US sounds better, but anyone from where I live would have to suffer a 12-hour reversal if he or she decides on the US. Australia? I’ve heard a number of Asian racist issues and I’d certainly not like to be involved in anything.
There are other factors such as cost, distance, timezone issues, and maybe any other things one could think about. The problem here is: Malaysia doesn’t have a decent-enough university to be granting internationally recognized degrees. Now honestly, as much as education is overrated and everything, there is pride in holding a world-class degree. Education is something one will undergo as if his or her life depends on it, which has some sort of 50% weightage in this case. It’s unfair to say that a construction worker is less smart than a doctor; that is plain wrong philosophy. All these things lead up to one and only one other thing: Is tertiary education even needed in the first place? It causes hassle, it causes expenditure, it causes time consumption, and probably many other things. Yet people still insist to place their children in prestigious institutions hoping to bring up the family name someday.
As far as my college life is concerned, I have yet to set my sights on any country, I have yet to choose an institution of my liking, heck I have even yet to pick on a course that befits whatever my interests are; Mechanical Engineering was and is until now, just a draft choice. Honestly, all the while, my subject combination fits my strong subjects in SPM as well as matching the requirements my dad has placed for me to take over his company in the far future. Then again with AKB48 all around, that whole concept might just seem a little too far off. Think about it, would I rather sit in a factory or somewhere in the outlying areas generating a large revenue while driving myself up to complete exhaustion or would I be somewhere else doing digital editing while not earning as much while having the time of my life? Your career is, after all, your lifetime source of income.
There’s just too much to think about at this point of time. While AKB48 members are having fun, getting tired everyday, generating a good amount of income, becoming famous and everything, I’m just a normal guy doing his college education which is oh-so-compulsory and directionless. AKB48 members have been in the business since they were young, in which they still are. Some like Matsui Jurina even started at a mere age of 11; something almost no one else could match. AKB48′s symbol Maeda Atsuko started since she was 14 and she recently had her 20th birthday. I really envy them, but not in the negative sense. Someday, I really wish I could be working with them and not whatever it is I went through, nearly 18 years of standardized lifestyle and normality.
I will be covering an update post on AKB48 but maybe at another time. Although this post is nearly reaching a length of 1,500 words, there’s not much to stop me from continuing what I have to say about this course in life. An AKB48 update, coming up next.
