“I WOULD like to call on Ms Nurfarhani Irfan to receive the Best Student Award for Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia 2013,” announced my teacher as I walked up the stage, a large smile on my face.
One of the highlights of my life is success in studies. This has usually come easy to me, provided that I put in the effort.
Since young, I was always a firm believer in hard work leading to success. I have been drilled with the concept that in order to pass exams with flying colours or to succeed in anything, you must put in your hard work and dedication. Practising on past-year papers time and time again has worked so far for Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia and A-Levels, so it would probably work for my degree, right? Right?
Unfortunately, no.
My first year in Cambridge was nothing short of challenging. I had struggled the entire year, and put in so much effort in finishing practice papers and design projects. It became harder when I did not actually like the general engineering course, so I had to learn certain topics that I was not interested in.
But I persevered. I told myself that it was okay that I did not understand most of the course material throughout the year. I would do past-year papers two months before my final-year exams and I would achieve my personal target for the year.
As we only have one exam per year, it is difficult to see where I stand in my studies until I received my first exam results after a year in Cambridge.
Imagine my despair when the results came out early last month and it was not what I had hoped for.
I wasn’t myself for almost two days, thinking where it went wrong. I am back home for three months and currently on internship —taking the opportunity to broaden my experience during the summer holidays. I couldn’t focus on work and my mind kept flying to the “whys” and “hows” of my failure. The pain of failure was made much worse because I had put in effort. So why didn’t I get the results that I wanted?
THE ANSWER
Surprisingly, I received my answer during my internship.
After emailing 10 companies in Malaysia, I obtained an eight-week long internship at a pharmaceutical company in Shah Alam. Constructed like a rotation system, the internship enabled me to be stationed at different departments each week so that I could obtain an overview of the industrial processes engaged by the company.
In my second week, I was attached to a staff at the Injectables Department. He straight away asked me to sit in front of him and proceeded to give a short lecture on the industrial processes that his department oversees. I noted down everything that he said and he asked, “Any questions?”, to which I replied “Umm, no?” which was, in retrospect, such a bad answer. He then jokingly scolded me and told me to think of questions to ask him by the end of the day. Then I went to my desk and started to think of questions, which was hard.
This ritual continued for several days until I trained myself to constantly think of questions that I needed to ask him. Bear in mind, noting down the answers and regularly revising the notes is equally important as you need to understand what you are learning. Even after a few weeks, I would still become blank when he suddenly shoots me questions.
THE TAKEAWAY
Through this experience, I realised that I didn’t ask a lot of questions during the previous year in Cambridge. Truth be told, my self-confidence plummeted when I started my studies at the university. So much so, that I was afraid to ask questions with my supervisors and lecturers because I did not want to look like a fool in front of them.
Most of the time, I referred to the answers or asked my friends for help instead, and blindly accepted the information that the lecturers dumped us with. And when I did not understand a topic, I would put it aside as I thought that I could catch up during the few months before final exams.
This internship taught me that it is important to ask questions. Yes, there’s a certain way of asking questions — you must first read up on your subject matter and phrase it in such a way so as to show to your lecturer or supervisor that you have done some background reading. This may seem trivial but from my observation, I could see that most Malaysians do not ask questions. This may be because we were brought up in an Asian culture where we must heed our elders’ advice and are taught not to question them.
I am not saying that we should go against our elders, it is just that we should always take people’s opinions or statements with a grain of salt. Always be critical of statements or articles posted online, especially on social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. This can be done by researching the sources cited online, comparing between two or three different sources or newspapers and asking elders on their opinions on the subject matter.
After that, make your own informed opinion on the subject matter. As my supervisor once advised: “If you think you are right, fight for it and stand firm on your opinion. If someone proves you wrong, admit your mistake and learn from it,”.
I am still struggling with this concept, even at 21 years old. But from the failure I could learn from my mistakes and pursue the road of personal growth.
To all of you out there, failure hurts, especially when you have put your utmost effort and dedication into it. But know this — however cliched it sounds — there’s always a silver lining behind every cloud, you just have to find it.
For my silver lining, I found out that questions are like keys. Without the right keys, you cannot open the locks.
**The writer is a first-year chemical engineering student at St John‘s College, University of Cambridge, UK. A Yayasan Khazanah scholar, she was a former student of Kolej Yayasan UEM and Sekolah Seri Puteri, Cyberjaya. Email her at education@nst.com.my