Brink
Tuesday, January 19, 2010Brink
I remember asking the receptionist if he was still in his office, and she pointed me to his office which was right around the corner. I knocked, and he was behind his desk arranging some papers and folders when he noticed me. It took a while, but his smile overcame his face and welcomed me into his office. We didn't talk there, though, and we ended up at the end of the corridor talking about my trip to New York City, his possible trip to Singapore, and my graduation. I remember he asked me about it, and I told him that I have finished my studies for good - or, at least for the time being. He looked at me with a frown in between his brows, somewhat accusingly I thought, and he told me that it was a pity because I should have stuck around for a longer period of time. I'd like to, I'd sure love to do that. But there is an end to everything, every phase in life, and that was my time - my time was up. I asked him for some advices about graduation, because I was a duck right there and then, standing before Dr. Carter, a turmoil of thoughts and emotions beneath my skin. I was petrified about the prospects of graduating, terrified of leaving my comfort zone. I had time, I really did have time. I'd not officially graduate until I receive my certificate, and I know that. Yet, to know that I was on the brink of my "real life", or "the rest of my life", I knew that the next phase is going to be a whole new challenge. New challenges entail new set of unknowns, and that to me is the scariest beast of all.
Dr. Carter's arms were folded before his chest at that time, listening to what I had to say about graduation. Graduation: the beginning of unemployment! I said, as I sarcastically pumped my fist into the air to show my enthusiasm - or, lack thereof. He laughed, and placed his big hands on my shoulder. It was comforting, the pressure, and reassuring, most of all. He lowered his voice a little bit at that time, and he told me that he understood my situation. "Just one thing though," he then went on to say. "Just relax". I have been brought up this way: We study, we study, and we study some more. We study for better grades, we study for better grades than everybody else. We do well at school, we base our lives around numbers and alphabets, and then we feel better about ourselves. We do that for a long time, for the better part of our youths, and then right after that you throw yourself into the next world - the adult world. The world with a lot of working, a lot of stress, and the world where you have to fend for yourself, where every man is for himself for the most part. It is a dog eat dog world there, a cannibalistic world where people would eat you alive if you are not careful. These are not zombies which we can destroy their brains without a care in the world. These are fellow human beings, people who are hungry not for your flesh for money. And you, and everybody else other than themselves, are standing in their way.
I've been taught that since young, especially from the teachers in school. If you screw up in one stage of your life, you are screwed for the rest of your life. I've grown to learn that grades isn't everything, although it helps. It helps with a lot of things, but it certainly isn't everything that a person should be aiming for. I have done well in my college life, in fact pretty damn well if I do say so myself. I don't think I have had a better streak of good grades throughout my academic life, and this time I am more qualified than ever - or so I thought. Even though I am armed with everything that I can possibly arm myself with to protect me from the rest of the world, I am still, in every which way possible, scared. That is the case for every college graduate, I presume, you feel the fear brewing in your stomach, and churning around like expired milk. Or at least I hope dearly that I am not alone in this, that people are supposed to feel the way that I am feeling right now. It hasn't even been a month since I returned from the United States - hell, a month ago, I was still in New York City. It hasn't been that long, and I know of people who have graduated for good, still touring the United States because 1) They have the time. 2) They have the money. It isn't too late, it isn't the end of the line. But. But. There's always a "but".
I don't think everything will miraculously work itself out, and that everything will be fine. But when he told me to relax, I feel he doesn't mean that I should just sit on my butt and wait for something to happen to me, you know? I feel what he meant was that things are not going to take a turn for the worse, that this is not the end of all things. We don't have to worry particularly for too many things, because we only need to do what needs to be done in order for things to work out, you know. I think that is reassuring, it really is. Like the hand he placed on my shoulder that afternoon, I keep reminding myself those words. My mother isn't worried, father isn't either. My friends from local universities took three months before they found a job, and I am not even back from Buffalo for a month at this point. These are the things that comfort me, and also the fact that I am not in this alone. A bunch of my friends just graduated along with me, and a bunch of other people will graduate in a few months as well. We are all in this together, you know, like brothers in arms on a battlefield of some sort. It'd be nice to sit down and talk about our hopes and fears one of these days, at least that'd be more comforting than to wallow in our own worries. I think I should relax, and in the mean time, do what I need to do to make that happen. It can be nerve-wrecking, it really can be. This period of time, although you are really not doing anything, it can be the most stressful period of time.
It's not like I have never transitioned from one phase in my life to another before. I have, many times, but they were always within the same ballpark, you know. The difference between primary school and secondary school was huge, and the same goes to the difference between secondary school and junior college. The workload got heavier and heavier, and the things you had to deal with became more and more challenging. Yet, we still have the examinations, we still had the projects, we still had the assignments. Everything was the same, but varied in more ways than one. School is school, after all, and all you have to do is to adapt to the new lifestyle, and you are good to go. It's like switching from swimming to doing water polo, you know. But this time, the working life, that is something that is completely different. It is different from everything that you've ever done before in your life, and that can be really daunting and overwhelming sometimes. It feels like the time right before my military service, and the thought process that went on in my head. I couldn't help but start to get nervous about what awaited me, you know, because it was a completely different life - or the lack of a life.
This is the part when it gets heavy, this is the part when we have to toughen up all over again. Life seems to be an intermittent series of sessions where we have to toughen ourselves up somehow. I don't think humans like change, or changes that are too dramatic. We like to be comfortable, to know what we are going to expect. There are times when we seek the unexpected, when the unknown excites us. But not when it also has to deal with reality, our real lives, not when there are consequences that are going to affect you directly. Every once in a while, we want to go to a foreign country because we know nothing about that country. There is that excitement in there somewhere, but not when you are gambling with life. Life is such, and we have to live it. We all wished to be somebody else when we were five, or ten, and then you grow up to somebody whom you are not. I suppose, in some ways, none of us want to tell the childhood versions of ourselves who you finally became. My childhood self would probably be disappointed that I didn't eventually become a movie director, that I am still in Singapore and still a part of this massive system. Well, such is life, and it is harsh. It presses down upon, but we do the best that we could to get by. But sometimes, when you think about it, just "getting by" isn't nearly enough any longer.
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