Thursday, September 21, 2006
blog
There has been some sacred values which I have held dear to me since young. One of them was: The only way to succeed is to get the best possible grades. Only when you have the best grades can you then consider yourself to have succeeded.
Or so I thought.
As I started to progress through life, it just dawned on me that there's so much else in life compared to grades. No doubt grades are important, but all it does is to serve to give you the best possible start to life. It is merely just the key to a possibly better social strata, to a 'better' life. Yet, all the grades which you spend almost 2 decades worth of time fighting for, and possibly mugging your brains out for, is going to end up nothing more than a decorated paragraph in your resume.
Even then, does a material life mean a good life? Is it worth slogging yourself in order to get that condo, car, credit card etc? Why can't a good life just be one that enables you to enjoy life as it is. Why bother working 12 hours a day just to buy a house that you barely spend enough time in?
Have I been blinded by the need to achieve academic excellence? Is there really a need to get top in every subject? Is there a need to be at the summit?
In the quest for academic excellence, I have found myself sacrificing a lot of things along the way, like friends. Yet, no amount of academic excellence could make up for these losses. In fact, in the quest, I have found myself being very afraid of failure to match my own expectations, being unable to handle failure properly. I am very afraid of coming down hard after being near the top for some time. I have a feeling that at the point, I could just snap.
The internal conflict between achieving academic excellence and getting a grip on myself is getting more pronounced everyday. Perhaps, the only thing which prevents me from snapping is my pragmatism. I tend to equate things with a numerical value and make a decision from there.
There may come one day when pragmatism might just fail to be the decision making mechanism for me and that is the day when I will snap. Instead I can choose to change my objective in life. No more 'achieve academic excellence at all costs'. It might be better to just strike a balance. No doubt that finding the equilibrium point is difficult, but it is better than being on one extreme end of the spectrum now.
Would I rather be an intelligent scientist with IQ 200 but EQ 0 and stuck in the lab everyday or a happy person who lives contentedly with IQ 100 but EQ 100? I guess the answer is obvious.
Maybe I should convince myself that promos is just a guage of how much I have learnt so far. There should be absolutely no need to put pressure on myself to achieve the 'best-of-the-best' result.
All I should do now is to just do the adequate revision and rein in the unnecessary pressure. There's no need to worry about whether I get 5 As or 5 Us, whether I top or bottom the class.
All that should matter is that I am holding the correct sacred values, I am happy.
Most importantly, I have kept my sanity.
shermon blogged @ 2:23 pm
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