The Ranting of a Legendary STPM Loser

  

          So the month of September is nearing to an end and you’re still stuck here in mommy and daddy’s house. Most of your classmates, including you, didn’t get a spot in any university. Too much competition, they say. On the happier side of life, most of your friends are ecstatic with their offer to public universities while you just stand there on the side lines cheering them on without showing any negative emotions because you don’t want to rain on their parade. That’s what you do best, right?

            But what about your other friends? The ones in the same lame-ass dingy boat as you? Where are they heading? You know some of them can’t afford private universities. If you felt so down and depressed because of college rejection and feeling like there’s no hope for you anymore, you could just imagine what it would be like for them. They must have taken it way worse than you do!

            Failing my STPM made me depressed for months. But now I feel a little bit better. Time heals all wounds, they say. But back then, I felt like such a failure. I realised I’m just not college material. Too stupid. Too incompetent. Too weak. So if I’m not college material, what material am I? (Probably the “recyclable” ones so I could be recycled (hopefully) into a much more successful person in my next life.) 

            Just hearing the word “college” sends me spiralling deep, deep down into something I would call the “Abyss of Melancholy”. On and on, going down. Never knowing if I would ever reach the end; never knowing if I could get back out of there again. I’m just stuck there in the blackness of that abyss. Staring into nothing because it is dark. Maybe there IS something uplifting there but my blindness in that abyss prevents me from doing so.

            I guess we really ARE “eating, sleeping, and waiting for a miracle.” (To quote my friend from my Form Six days). But come on! A miracle? For slobs and losers like us? We don’t deserve miracles. I know we didn’t take our STPM seriously. We were lazy, we procrastinate, we wasted time, money and energy. We lacked motivation. Why would rare, precious blessings such as MIRACLES want to happen to the likes of us?!

            And now we pay the price; a heavy price. A price that will affect our future greatly. A price that will stick with us for the rest of our lives. I know all of us wished we could start from square one. Back to the first day of our Form Six Orientation Week. If we knew then what would happen (or not happen) to us now, we would have worked our ass off trying to get the highest GPA we can possibly get. We would do everything in our power to make sure we can make it to college.

            But Form Six is no “easy peasy lemon squeezy”. You need your:

TEN FORM SIX CHECKLIST FOR SUCCESS SURVIVABILITY

1.      Willpower

2.      Discipline

3.      Hard work

4.      Passion

5.      Commitment

6.      Dedication

7.      Resilience

8.      Energy

9.      Optimistic and Realistic mind set

10. A sliver of God-like good luck charm to even MAKE your GPA past 2.00

Maybe I exaggerated a little bit (or a lot) but you get the picture. It’s fucking difficult. Almost impossible. Especially for a below  average plain jane student like me.

 

            And they say those who entered Form Six are losers who couldn’t get into universities. Yeah, they were right but not really. Because Form Six changes you. It moulds you into a much better person. Did it mould everybody enough to qualify for a degree? Not quite. Did it mould everybody enough to face the real tough, cruel, unfair world like a boss? Fuck yes.

            So whether you successfully entered university for a degree or not get accepted into any because of a low GPA, you successfully finished your Form Six without quitting halfway. You didn’t find an easy way out because you wanted to fight this battle through to the end. Maybe you even knew you’re not gonna make it in the end; yet you kept on going anyway.

            And you came out of this battle as a survivor. A survivor that went through a lot of shit and still kept on fighting. Even if it means you might get all the cuts and bruises from the gruelling syllabus, assignments and responsibilities chucked on your weak shoulders. But those cuts and bruises would later turn into badass-looking battle scars. And when you look back at those scars, you would think, “Wow. Did I just make it out of Form Six alive? That’s so surreal. Almost as if I was in some kind of epic dream. I shall treasure all of its warm comforting bittersweet moments to thaw my cold dead heart forever” You know, something like that.
 

            I believe we can all find our niche in life someday. Failure in obtaining a high score in our STPM is just one of life’s challenges in the “Petty and Beginner’s Level” category. Probably just a small one. It taught us a good lesson. It would prepare us to face the more challenging obstacles we would face later in life that would make our STPM failure look like… potatoes? XD

            I don’t normally use swear words. I never utter one in front of anyone except when I’m alone and that I only mutter it under my breath. So I apologise for the foul language.