I realized that you are not who you are in Singapore – you are who your academic institutions are. This is one fact that I always wanted to evade, escape and deny. But the fact stood out like a sore irritating pimple again when I went to an event with Khai on last last Saturday. “So which school are you schooling?” “Oh! Polytechnic!” “I was expecting most of the participants are undergrads.” “So do you plan to further study?”

No paper = no future?

I used to argue with people, saying that with qualifications doesn’t mean everything – it doesn’t equate with your personalities, your beliefs and your ambitions. I was rudely proven wrong by all the high-flyers’ events I went to…how to continue the conversation when short awkward silences came promptly after my self-introduction? You saw how people here talk non-stop about the branded schools they came from. It doesn’t help the situation that I’m a babbling nervous wreck with strangers and I’m lousy with my spoken English.

Job fairs I went to asked me which institutions I went to and not the grades I had. Employers never looked at my academic script at all. In the end, I’m just a loser in their eyes like others as I didn’t manage to get a degree in the local universities (I’ve got a feeling it doesn’t matter to them what degree the employee is having as long as it is a degree). People ask me why I chose to go to a polytechnic then to go private universities after my A-Levels. Why didn’t I go overseas since I passed my A Levels? Reasons are simple – I can’t afford the money and I didn’t want to obtain a private degree.

Am I stupid just because I can’t get into universities? Am I not capable because I am not an undergrad?

Yes, I may not be good in many things but that doesn’t mean that any other undergrads are better than me. I gave advices to my university friend for his assignments and helped him to correct his grammar. Stupid? Yeah right. Don’t brain-wash me into lowering my self-esteem.

I may have fallen off the track now but that doesn’t mean I won’t be up again.

Do I really need a university degree to be successful in life? I would really like to prove this wrong. After all, conventional wisdom is NOT the absolute truth.

I know my life ahead would be tough but I will strive on. I will try to improve myself in areas that I’m weak in, be it personality or skills. I will break away the restrictions and boundaries that are trapping me.

I am bZ.

(geez, if only I’m that confident most of the time)

Well, referring to the title, I have decided to write articles like I used to do in JC every week. I shall set Sunday night as the day to post my articles on anything that caught my interests. I admit that I’m not an avid reader of the current affairs, so if you want to enlighten me with your knowledge, please drop a mail to bz@bzbzilla.com . In addition, if I violated any rules of the English grammar, please tell me too as I learnt my English through trial and error (don’t ask my opinion about education – that would be a whole new post).

If anything, I’m serious about learning.

(Not route-learning though, I had more than ten years of that.)

12:00 AM

Sunday, July 22, 2007