Annus horribilis?

Well, if there is only one wish left given to me, it won't be a hard decision after all. I really need to go back home. Not being home for the whole six months, I don't even know if it really worth it. 

My family has been supportive of me since forever. In everything I do. As far that I know of. Well, sometimes it is a good thing, but for most of the time, it isn't. At least for me. I know that they actually care about me but they don't really know how to show it. And for the kind of person that I am, I need to see the we-love-you-we-care-about-you act a bit even if they need to fake it. Sounds crazy right? But thankfully, all those days are over now. I kind of feel that I had changed a bit in a way that I actually think. Honestly, I'm still sensitive to what everyone is saying and get affected to it in some ways. But I'm getting more positive about life, my life. Well, improvement still counts right.

Since February this year, I'd been undergoing this upskilling programme funded by TalentCorps Malaysia (Thanks a lot!). It was fun and miserably exhausting. I think that I used half of my life force on it. Since we had lectures during weekends for two months. I don't even have any time to recuperate or recharge my energy, seriously. But I did learn a lot during this training. And the most crucial part about it is that it open my eyes wide enough to realise what current industry actually expect from fresh graduates. Believe it or not, after some lectures on training, I actually lost some of my interest on  stuff we studied in our real lectures in college. It's like, "why am I learning about this, is this even important?" questions. Well after thinking about it, the reason would be that the university is teaching the students hoping some will be researchers. While the industry need graduates to know something else, and we don't actually know how to do it. Weird right? But it makes me realise how not competent I am at the moment that if by chance I actually finding jobs I will most probably get none.

Well, that is that. Apart from all the skills and technical stuff learned during the training, there is one thing that I am really happy about. I actually started to really understand my own personality during this period. Not because of the training, but because of the other people joining the training. They made me do a personality test, which turned out to be accurate. If you are interested to do one, you can just google >> 16 personalities test <<. I turned out to be ENFJ-T or also known as the Protagonist (The Giver). Sounds so fake isn't it? But hey, you'll never know if you don't try!

After reading all the descriptions and details, I googled and find out who else in this whole world are having the same personality as I am, just to know what and how they think, their opinions are. My findings are amazing. I never know someone else would be thinking the same way that I did. I always think that I'm weird or unique in a way. But, no. It is just that currently I'm in a circle of community that have different personalities from me. There are reasons why I can be so close to certain groups of people, while very awkward and sometimes hurtful with other groups of people. We think differently! and the way we see the world is totally different. That's why.

Knowing about my own personality teaches me to be grateful and to be more understanding of my everyday relationships with my friends or classmates etc. We might be offensive to them too, in a way that we couldn't understand. I always think only about my own feeling, that someone are responsible for making me feel that way. Never was my fault. This makes me feel sick with myself, feel bad. The perks of being me? I easily indulge myself with anxiety. Sometimes, it is uncontrollable and I can't sleep at all.

But, amidst all these stressful environments that I am in at the moment, I'm not sure exactly where did I get the strength to endure and just go on with it. I get stressful a lot but I noticed that my reaction to it is kind of weird in a way. I laugh and talk with a high pitch when I'm sharing my problems when I'm sad and stress. But I get to solve this during the most unpredictable moment of all in my life. It was during the last day of our Upskilling training as we had our industry engagement day where we had our interviews with the real companies like Biocon, CCM Biopharma, and Cancer Research Malaysia.

During one of the interview, I met this one interviewer which I would rather not say her name here. She completely changed my perspective of life in just a split of a second. She made me realise that whatever we do in our life is not for others, but for ourselves. If we are able to make a good life, it would mean that we are able to be responsible to our family too. I told her that most of the time I couldn't prioritise between work and family. Which is absolutely hard for me to decide which one to prioritise. I know that I have a good result in studies. But I always thought that I'm still not good enough and I'm not satisfied with it. I compared to others and feel inferior among my friends who did actually get first class. But then she asked me why do you benchmark your life and your satisfaction with other's achievement? We should be comparing our own achievement with our previous self to really see our potential and be happy if there are some improvements. We are we, and other have their own life. I went out of the interview room with a big smile that I had never did for more than 2 years.

It is not a annus horribilis after all. And since we still have more than half of the year to go. Now, everytime I wake up from bed, I always tell myself,

Never, never, never, never give up.

Well, I hope that I could change the way you see your life too. :)