Day 12

The opportunities to make my own choices in life

“Everyone else are looking to get into Medical Programme, and you want to do the opposite? Well done!” I remember Bro. Azmi’s big smile, my then school coordinator, when I handed him my application to change from my current track to biology.

I was 18 then, and it was the first major life decision which I came to entirely by my own.

I hated the competitive vibes in my classes in the first semester. When I returned home during the break, I watched Simon Jackson’s documentary on how he was raising funds for the protection of spirit bear in Canada. He was 16. I remember vividly watching him cruising on a houseboat in a jungle of British Columbia and thinking to myself;

“That’s exactly what I want to do!”

When I returned to college that year and discovered that my university offered an environmental track through its biotechnology programme, I called my parents to let them know I’m changing my major.

Perhaps I didn’t know it then, but I learned then to listen to my own judgments and instincts when it comes to making choices for my own life.

As the start of many decision-making that follows in my life, I’m grateful for my parents at the time for giving me the space and time to decide on my own -

changing my major to biology instead of becoming a pharmacist/doctor, choosing to do my internship at a place where there was no mobile or Internet connectivity, my short stint with Old Town White Coffee, going to Australia, moving out of my parents house to move to KL, choosing to work with small companies instead of joining the public service or government-linked/multinational companies, living and traveling on my own.

They may be or seem like trivial choices that we make day in and day out in our adult lives now, but I look back and I know how lucky I and privileged I am to be able to choose what I do and do what I did.

October 10, 2015