Passion? Important?
Growing up, I have plenty of diaries. The goal is, as you may guessed, is simply to record my day-to-day life. Ok-lah, the truth is, I have many because I’ve never gotten to finish one, so I decided to just make a new one every time I feel like it. Jokes aside, obviously, the rule of thumb said that the first page of your diary should list your biography. Despite being the same Kimi all my life, my biodata has never been the
same. The ‘cita-cita part’ had seen so many different occupations ranging from a police officer to a zookeeper.
Unlike some people who had their career goals all figured out early in their life, I still haven’t found that clear spark, even to this day.
“Dahtu pahal kau apply econs untuk scholarship?”
“Bukan scholarship dah set ke apa korang kena sambung?”
are some of the many questions I’ve received every time I told them about the story I’ll write in this blog.
I remember doing the career test in high school, where you tick a few boxes before counting it down to get certain letters that show whether it corresponds with your future interest or not. I wanted to be a lawyer at that time, but my result doesn’t show that I have what it takes. Only three students out of 117 had results that did not match their ambition. Guess what, we were invited to the stage to present our findings to the entire batch. Two of the three students’ results were considered 'invalid,' owing to the fact that 'the test does not show the results for animator and preaching-based careers,' leaving me alone on that stage, unsure of what the future held. It never bothered me because we were only Form 1 at the time. Chill-lah, SPM lagi 5 tahun kot.
In the year 2020, I've finally made up my mind. I want to become a pilot. I was drawn to their working style, lifestyle, and salary (I mean how can you forget that part). I was so invested that I began surveying multiple flying schools throughout Malaysia. To this day, some of them are still sending me promotional emails HAHA. Surprise! It's covid season, people. To cut a long story short, the aviation industry was one of the hardest hits, with many pilots laid off and a long line of unemployed young guns, joining this path seems like a very dangerous move. However, because it was still March 2020 and SPM was scheduled in October, I was confident that things would return to normal after a few months. From one suspension to another, we finally sat for SPM in March ‘21 and the pandemic is still a thing.
Finally, I have a clear goal of what I wanted to be, a pilot. I made the decision to tell my parents about it. Although they did not say anything, I could tell that they were very concerned about my decision, especially given how the pandemic has affected pilots. To be honest, I kind of agree that choosing aviation at that time would be putting my future at risk. So, I decided to look into some other careers that I might be interested in. And the next path I chose turns out to be one of the dumbest things I've ever done.
It's finally scholarship application season. I felt pressured to fill in those forms, particularly because I had no idea of what I wanted to do in the future. For someone like me, having no interest in a particular field and then discovering that your only dream has been shattered was one of the hardest time in my life. Having lots of relatives pursuing Medics, I just feel as if I’m somehow attracted to it, but at the same time, I’m not. Due to my near-sightedness, I filled out my UPU form with courses in the medical field and applied for medical scholarships. Out of the blue, a week before UPU registration ended, I’m still asking myself whether this is the right choice. One night, I was on YouTube, watching people playing video games when suddenly a video came up in my recommended tab. It was a video on economics. I'm not the type of person who goes to the internet specifically to watch ‘ilmiah’ content, but somehow, I'm intrigued enough to click on that video. Oh boy, it was the most meaningful click of my life. The following day, I did some more research on it, but I kept on asking myself:
“Do I really want to do economics or is it just because I feel as if I have no other choice rather than to take Medics?”
So I went to my sister, I told her about the dilemma that I was facing. Throughout the conversation, one of the key moments that stood out was:
“Taktau do nak sambung apa, sumpah takde minat, nak join medic malas, econs cam best tapi still lah, macam takde passion.” I told her.
Growing up, I’ve been told that every person must have their own passion, by the time you habis SPM, you need to have a clear vision on what you need to do.
So, she replied with this, and it changed the way I view myself,
“Ok apa takde passion, atleast you aren’t clinging to any specific interest, you don’t have any targeted course, and you aren’t forced to like narrow your career scope. So, Imi boleh amik any course sebab macam takde gain or lose. Passion ni bukannya terus ada, kita yang buat interest ni, bukan boleh paksa paksa.”
To put into a new perspective, I no longer consider not having an interest as a disadvantage, but rather otherwise. Simply put, you can pursue and try a lot more things. You have a larger window of opportunity, and the best part is that you will not lose anything if things go sideways.
Comparing the two choices, a medical field can be said to be much narrower than economics. In economics there’s thousands of paths that you can choose from which is perfect if you have little to no idea of what you’re going to pursue (since you have lots of path to explore), however for medics, there’s only a limited number of things you can do. Without any doubt, I’ve fully changed my mind. Bear in mind, during that time, UPU deadline was in less than a day and I’ve already applied medics for 3 scholarships (One of them even offered me a placement HAHA). I changed all my details to economics, and it was the beginning of the most interesting part in my life yet.
Now, I’m currently under JPA-PPN scholarship to pursue economics and econometrics and my love and passion towards economics has grown fonder from day to day. I’ve learnt that life isn’t always about the things you want, but it was more about the things you get as you move. A wiseman said that you aren’t living if everything is handed to you on a plate. Despite the fact that my dream of becoming a captain has yet to come true, I can confidently state that my future is brighter and clearer than it was previously. Last but not least, remember that passion and interest have no deadline; they can strike at any time, and you should not feel obligated to 'produce' them.
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