it’s not over
March 21st, 2008 by iamnosuperman"If God put you to it, He will bring you through it."
One of my bridging friends put this on his MSN and it really captured my attention due to what I am feeling now. This past almost-three months have been by far the hardest time for me. It’s the way I live, the social issue, and of course the session i had yesterday. Not just for me,I think. For most of Bridging’s students, we are facing the common problem; such as : the far-away-from-home feeling, the friggin diagnostic tests that keep getting harder and harder, the inevitable assignment (both essays and presentations), and let’s not forget the coming-soon interview. Plus, we have to do all of those things in English, which is not our first language. So, yeah, it is quite a challenge for us.
For me, I just realized it two weeks ago. Life in Singapore is expensive if you can’t resist it. Last month, I spent as much as my rent per month. Yes, Singapore is a small country compared to my Indonesia. But it doesn’t mean Spore doesn’t have this temptation to splurge all your money. They don’t have anything, but they got everything here. Got it? They don’t have any sufficient resources to be proud off, yet you can find everything here *except bubblegum ;( They imported everything to here, even sands for their beach. So, I’m tempted by the completeness of Spore and started to waste on unimportant things. I tried everything, went everywhere and forgot what I’m supposed to do. Next thing happen was a long speech by my family when they visited me and I’m cooking fried rice because it only cost me 60cents. Lesson learned. Self-control is crucial.
The other important issue is of course, your friends. The ones you usually hang with, talk with, and have fun with. For me, this group of friends is my fellow Indonesians. Somehow we have this bound to each other. You might said the other nationalities probably doing the same thing. They did, but I guarantee you we are the most solid one. Or at least, that’s what peoples have been seeing. There’s this stereotype problem. There’s too much love, hate and lies collide inside. We also had a lot of fun times. Most of the times we did have fun. I have to admit it’s a waste of time, money and even more, opportunity to learn. I was losing track. Ignoring the compulsory and chasing the optional. And it damn showed well on my two diagnostic test. Another lesson learned. Self-control is crucial every time, in every single action we do.
Last but not least, it’s about this session with the administration peoples from SMU. They were the ones who are in charge for Indonesians. We had this sessions two days ago to talk about our performance in this program so far. We got slapped. Hard. Based on current records, out of 28 students only 4 can make it. We were left far behind Myanmar, Vietnam, and much further from China. They mentioned that if we still continuing this behavior, just expect for the worse. I can’t tell you details cause I barely remember it. But one thing for sure, we got that high that it felt very hard when we hit the ground.
Just as the days seemed not worst enough, as me and my friends were having dinner, Dimas gave us another long and touching speech. He’s in our age, but already in year 1 because he got accepted by direct entry. He’s, by far, the closest senior to us. Dunno why is he very kind and nice to us. *hehehehe. I remember he said " I don’t want to take you guys to airport and say goodbye to all of you. Just imagine next semester having one of us missing. Everything is gonna be different and it sucks." And of course he mention a lot of advice and hypothetical, which ended up he couldn’t finished his own dinner. -hahha thank u dim. we laff u
It’s just been a very hard time for me. I almost give up and start planning plan B, C, and so on. I almost thinking to convince my parents that I won’t make it here. I almost think it is actually over. But then I realize He will bring us through it. It is not over.
