Finally my painstaking effort paid off, when I succeeded to put my hands on straight A's for my Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia. Disastrously, there were only 7 Malays out of 39 students who managed to get straight A's in my school. My school is no ordinary one. It is a premiere school.
And my result was not so great if compared to my Chinese and Indians friends. Frankly, I'm not happy with my result. When I told my friends so, they said that I'm not grateful because my result was better than them. But, think again. 7 of us were considered to be the "best" among the Malays. Yet if we compare our results with the best Chinese and the best Indians, we stand nowhere near them.
I don't believe in the so called "natural intelligence", I believe result is 100% based on effort. Even me myself, I didn't put total effort until the mid year of Form Five. Based on my experience, Chinese and Indians, they worked very hard. In the early Form Four, where most of the Malay students were playing around, involving themselves in "cinta remaja", Chinese and Indians had already started their tuition classes. And they were serious about it. Not like most of my Malay friends, they attended tuition classes just to "ushar awek-awek" or "ushar-ushar awek" (I don't know which one).
Tun Dr. Mahathir once said, "Being successful is easy, you just need to be hardworking." It sounds simple and yes it is simple - if you work hard, you'll be successful. I remember when I told this to one of my friends, she said "Ya la kalau dah rajin mesti la dapat elok." Then I was thinking to myself "Kalau macam tu pasai apa hang tak rajin?" This is a typical Malay attitude. We know if we do, we will succeed. Then why don't we do?
And then, we, Malays don't have confidence in ourselves. Before starting anything, we already make assumptions such as: "Tak buleh ni.", "Banyak sangat tu nak buat.", "Susah sangat la." etc. If we keep on thinking like this, until the end of the world also we can't make a progress. Simply because we are too scared to start. Journey to a thousand miles begin with the first step - this is another quote that some people might think its silly. "Ya la mesti la kena mula dgn langkah pertama."
But the question is, do we really start? For example, back then when I was in secondary school, when my friends want to start studying, they saw that there are many topics yet to be covered. Then they simply think "Banyak lagi ni, mana buleh habeh." And they didn't start at all. Finally time runs out, they become drop out.
That's all for this post. Thank you for reading my blog. So long until then.
