When I was a kid, I wanted to become a doctor/surgeon. I wanted to be able to help people and get them to feel better, because I knew how much it sucked to have a fever and oh dear god, stomachaches (I always cried when I had these, lol and still do) as a kid. However, at some point in life, I wanted to become an actress instead. Then, a businesswoman. Then, a psychologist and finally, a psychiatrist/writer. Heck, I even tried applying myself to be these with my friends at the time like playing doctor, and especially being a businesswoman. I once tried to sell sweets and what not to my classmates at the age of 9 (the hell was I thinking?) to earn some pocket money which I was quite successful at doing at the time because I was basically competing with the staff at the cafeteria. ‘Course, that career was put to a stop by my teacher, who told the whole class something about jellies (one of my products) and green apples and choking (a story that I find absurd now that i’m older), while embarrassing me and mortifying all of us in the process. Just goes to show how easy it is to manipulate or should I say, how impressionable a kid’s mind can be, and just how some teachers can be really mean. I’m looking at you, Malaysian teachers.
Now that I’m older, it’s sad to say but I can’t find a passion or an aspiration to follow. No, I’m actually afraid to. My intentions to be any of the above mentioned were killed off by the reality that it is a long and arduous road to be anything, but what I’m really afraid of is the chance of failing again and again on the way and not to mention, some discouragement from some people. My past experiences don’t help, if anything they discourage me from pursuing anything I want to do. Funny how my thinking is all single-loop rather than double loop.
just add the fails on those lines
Sometimes, I wonder why am I still in this program, when to be perfectly honest, I don’t enjoy being in it. Perhaps it’s still too early for me to judge, being a first year and all but I cannot help but wonder if it will be the same next year and the year after that. Won’t I just be wasting three years? Is it necessary to have a degree to enter the media industry? Is a degree in any art even necessary to be precise? Over and over, these undesirable thoughts would come back to haunt me when I try to think about my future. Time and time again, I would get the occasional, “just go with the flow” advice, but it just doesn’t help that there’s nothing there to help me “flow” in any direction. I feel like I’m on a boat but there’s no current to push it at all.
So, I’m going to recount my past and think about why I’m even here in the first place. When I was in Year 12, I originally planned to go into a Marketing course because a friend suggested I should. So, I took up Business Management as one of my subjects and wow, I hated it. Not because I hate business in general, but because the whole subject was about memorizing business terms/words and their definitions. What I was interested in though, was learning how businesses worked first-hand, why it worked like that and well, solving problems. When I was about to graduate though, my mother dissuaded me from pursuing marketing, for reasons like the career itself will build up so much stress in me and since I was so stressed out from being a prefect and had other prefect-related problems at the time, I agreed to not do it. She then suggested I do communications, mainly because she had recently noticed my hobbies and thought it would fit me well.
What were my hobbies? Arts. I have a huge history in dealing with the arts since I was a child. Even though I aspired to become people that were in the business and science department, arts was also a part of my life. First I have to mention that my drawing ability is not the best. I have no talent in drawing life-like images or drawing up some real cool stuff on paper. At best, I can draw stick figures which prompted me to make comic books out of my school’s note books. I created a character that became a huge part of my life then at the age of 10, ‘Kung-Fu Boy’ (wished I made a better name) who fought ninjas and saved people across the world! My classmates enjoyed these comics and I hope they did, and somehow they started making their own comics which was totally awesome. I remember making at least 6 “volumes” and only stopped so that I could concentrate on my studies.
Poetry and drama were the same. But I’ve never really indulged in them, because poetry is hard as hell in conveying emotions than just rhyming stuff which was the only thing I was kickass at, and drama was just a hobby. Another big part of my life was strangely, documenting what I did when I was a kid with my camcorder that I sadly lost, especially that glorious footage of me speaking to my future self, curses! And then there was animating, creating and drafting characters, and a small bit of editing. One thing I’ve learned from this is that what I truly enjoy, is making a story. A fictional story. So, I’m back to the question, why am I still in this program? I like making stories but at the moment, all I’m doing is reading theories. Also, up ’til now, arts was a hobby of mine but I didn’t think about pursuing one as a career. It was just that, a hobby. Sure, I like to edit and make stories for next to nothing if it gave me some fun, but I still can’t see myself as someone who would be making a film. Maybe it’s because I haven’t put myself into any professional practices so I have never experienced what it’s like to make one.
And I still do want to pursue business (a teeny-weeny part) but I guess that’ll have to wait when I do my Masters or…?
On a random note, I want to share this post, something which I believe many people can relate to.
