Now before we begin, it’s really important to know that the start of everything depends on the events leading up to it.

 

I mean, if you think about it, to have a good start in anything, you’d have to prepare for it...

 

Exams, schooling, work etc… everything depends on how well you’re prepared for it.

 

In this case, or my case, I acknowledge the fact that the start of my 1st year was really built on how I prepped for it.

 

I’ll touch on that here, because even today, looking back, the months leading to the first chapter of my Uni life probably gave me the strength mentally to face the adversities that I faced throughout my time in Uni.

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And perhaps it’d would help you in managing your expectations when going through your Uni chapters.

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A heads up: it’s been a long time, but everything started with a rather sad and pathetic story. My discipline, my independence, and how I leverage what I have to my advantage… they all came to being thanks to a painful experience….

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That story is somewhere down my old Blogger post, but I think that’s for a separate story, since your attention here is limited.

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Anyway, that episode was really one of the most embarrassing points in my college years, but it honestly was a wakeup call I desperately needed.

 

It wasn’t pleasant… but it was necessary.

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To sum up that episode, I lost almost all of my college friends back then because of how weak a character I was.

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How weak was I? I’ll list it down here:

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1. Clingy to only my flatmates

2. Had 0 confidence in my own studies

3. Had 0 courage to face the unknown

4. Had 0 social awareness

5. Had 0 idea what I wanted in life

 

I think that’s enough. Now remember that this is my college days right after high school, NOT my Uni days. And I think it’s enough to show everyone that I wasn’t one of those kids born naturally with talent or skills.  Enough to show that I sucked as a person…

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A brief context: I started learning to live alone in my college days. I had moved into a flat near college with 7 others: one friend which I didn’t know quite well from high school, and 6 others from outstation... 

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Together we shared the unit and had our own rooms which was cool! Facilities were more or less taken care of, but food wise was a bit inconvenient, though we soon found out there was some catering services and that helped us settle our food stuff.

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Also, I’ll refer to the flat we stayed together as "The Flat” from here on now...

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See, before I entered college, I had scored a bursary/conditional scholarship to pursue my pre-tertiary education. And I was 1 out of the 9 students in my high school who managed to score it.

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And I was also the ONLY one in my class to have achieved it.

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OK. PAUSE. Right here.

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I am NOT here to bloat or gloat about my results. I decided to put that here into this story to give a clearer picture of how things started to go wrong and how wrong I was about myself.

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In fact, I truly believe that THAT was really the start of my personal development arc…

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Let me break it down: How do you think I felt when I was one of the rare few in my school to have successfully scored the scholarship?

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I felt PROUD. Proud that my hard work had paid off, proud that now I can choose one of the top tier colleges to pursue my studies, and proud that I had just saved a ton of money for education.

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The scholarship really secured my finances and I was really glad that my parents wouldn’t have to pay for my pre-tertiary education.

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Sounds kinda like a real accomplishment, right?

And perhaps some of you reading this would have had experienced your parents encouraging you to study well to get scholarship to secure your future?

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Well, I had my fair share too.

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However, here is the real kicker: I may have scored those results, but I didn’t know how bad my mental strength was.

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Remember the 5 things I mentioned that I was weak as a character?

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In other words, I was only book smart, but I wasn’t street wise.

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And I sure wasn’t wise in understanding myself.

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I thought that my high school results were all I needed to face society.

 

I thought I was ready to face adversity that may come... 

 

And I thought that I would survive them all, despite not being exactly clear of what I wanted for the future.

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This uncertainty was the catalyst to the breaking of my character in the following months in college as I soon realized I had been so wrong in my mindset, and soon after found myself spiraling downwards without any control, both in my relationships with my friends and my studies.

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See, even though I was considered a scholar, there were many other scholars in the intake batch that I was in.

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In fact, ALL of them were scholars!

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They were easily better than I was in any aspect, and my false self-confidence started to give way, and one event led to another and I found myself at the bottom of the pit of despair, simply because I couldn’t keep up with those around me, and I sure was starting to feel absolutely like TRASH.

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I won’t touch on my exam results, but enough to say that they were solid enough to shake my confidence further, but I’ll touch on my personality traits that really catapulted me away from the path I thought I could take.

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See, I was easily misunderstood, and always said the wrong stuff at the wrong time, and had a tendency to create awkward silences.

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And you know what the worst part is?

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I didn’t even realize it.

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0 social awareness, remember?

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It came to a point that my flatmates had enough of me, and laid it out to me one night and… we just went our separate ways.

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Even when it was time to leave The Flat after our studies, I left without anyone knowing…

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Because I really had no one to speak to at that point of time.

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And they weren’t interested in bidding goodbye to me anyway. They had gone out to have fun in the nearby theme park, and had shared a group photo of all of them in the chat group for The Flat, which I was still a part of…

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And when I saw that photo, I truly felt that they were better off without me.

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They were happy, and really looked like they were having the most fun time in college, nothing like when they were afflicted by my incompetent self.

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Nothing like when they decided to let me know of my “wrongdoings”…

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They were mad, annoyed and decided to let me know in one of the gentlest ways they could possibly think of…

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They could have done it many other ways, more brutal ways… but they gave me mercy.

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Even though I had their most honest opinions, and their mercy, to be told of everything that I did wrong and how they all agreed it was my personality problem, and how I failed to realize that the image of what I had of myself was a contrary of what they had of me…

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I felt hurt.

 

Really hurt…

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So much so that after I left the Flat, I spent the next few months back at home, and made a conscious decision to decline all and any invitation in my chat groups with all my other friends from high school to gather for some fun.

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I rejected ALL invitation, and everyone else.

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I effectively shut myself away from the world.

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Why, you ask? It was simple…

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“What if my other friends other than those that were involved in that episode also felt the same, but didn’t want to tell me?”

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“No,no, no, I can’t take it… I don’t want to show my face to anyone else… I don’t want to know what they think of me. I… I am scared…”

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“Do my teachers think of me that way? Does my mentor see me that way? Who else thinks of me the same?!”

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Safe to say I suddenly had social anxiety, and I wouldn’t even bother to speak to anyone outside of my family.

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I had been so wrong about myself, my self-image collapsed soon after, and my self-confidence shattered to bits and pieces.

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I didn’t know who I was, who I wanted to be, or who I was meant to be…

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And it was really really painful.

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Now… that episode was painful, but necessary.

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And I don’t blame those who told me everything that evening. I really don’t.

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It took me awhile to really accept that what they said about me was true, and I was just bad at being a person, or was a socially awkward person to begin with.

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Had it not been for them, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.

The values I hold dear to me, the principles that I adhere to till today, the dreams that I have for myself… they were possible because of that painful moment.

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Quoting a line from a book I just read:

 

“Happy moments don’t change you. Painful moments do.”

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If there was a first experience of having to “grow up”, that moment was the call to GROW UP.

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And if you want a better analogy, it’s like having your character in your own Anime go through a character development arc.

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And we all know those arcs can really be painful for the characters… and sometimes, you’d feel the emotions so deeply that you’d cry for them.

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I went through mine, and today, I’m a different person already. Thanks to an eventful chapter I’d name it as “Time to Wake Up”.

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Right, by now you would have probably read a chapter of my life that not many in real life friends know about.

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In fact, after so long, I wonder how many in real life friends I can actually still converse with.

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We’ve all gone our separate ways, and the days when we were together having meals in the canteen, comparing notes for lessons, complaining about how the lecturers sucked (kusaaa) and how to do our homework, they all just seemed like yesterday…

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And I wonder if any of them would be interested to read this long chapter…

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Ha, I think I may even publish a book sometime in the future!

 

Perhaps I could help even more young people to build up their expectations properly, and teach younger generations to recognize the signs of having to Level Up, and to impact many more lives who share the same interest in “cultured contents” ;)

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What do you think?

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OK. I feel this is enough for a first chapter, or rather the Pre-Chapter 1 story, and in the next chapter, I will share with you my personal experiences of my early years in Uni~

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I’ll do my best to provide timely releases, and I do hope the chapters could actually help you guys here prep yourselves mentally, and also start developing some key behavior/habits/practices to make use of your youth =)

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See you next time!