Monday, 27 Nov 2023

I think it's probably time for me to discuss the second piece of advice. The first piece of advice was from Bujei, advising me not to give up. Now, let's delve into the second piece of advice. It was given to me at Lansing Airport by one of my seniors. He is perhaps the only male senior I've had who was also taking the same courses and pursuing the same degree as I am—biochemistry and molecular biology. Additionally, he is the only one who took the the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, alongside me. No, it's not like 'with me' as in together; I mean, he took the same program. We didn't take it together.

So, the reason I mentioned that is because in the IB Diploma, we learn other subjects as well, including a minimum of two languages. In my case, it was Malay. We studied Malay literature, English language, mathematics, and sciences—both social science and natural science. When I spoke about learning literature, I was quite immersed and active, writing poems because, at the time, I was quite sure I was experiencing depression for various reasons, although I'm not exactly sure what those reasons were. I'll have to ponder what those reasons might be. The advice he gave me was to talk to someone about whatever issues I have, as I had been posting my poems on Instagram. He might be one of the few people who can actually understand what I'm writing. Obviously, he learned literature in the IB Diploma Program, and he told me that my poem seems to reflect what I was experiencing at the time (the difficult moments). It seems like you might need to talk to someone about it.

Yeah, it took me years before I actually applied that advice, mainly because I'm a very shy person. I particularly do not like to share any of my problems with anyone, not even with my family. If I decide to share something, I want to be sure that there will be some sort of constructive advice, some kind of action plan that I can get from sharing the problem. Consequently, I don't really tell anyone about my problems because I tend to overthink it, and in the end, I just talk myself out of sharing it. I know some people can easily share their problems, but for me, I really need to get something out of it if I were to share that problem with others. So I've only started doing that recently, like a few months ago, really. And it felt great, honestly, but that was just the beginning. It barely scratched the surface of what I'm really experiencing. It's quite lonely not being able to share any of my problems, and it's affecting my professional life. As someone who doesn't share problems, even when it comes to study-related issues, it can be problematic. I've been scolded for it, so that's when I realized that if I don't share my problems, or at least share them with someone, it's going to bite me in the ass.

Yeah, the advice was from Hamzah. He suggested that I should open up to someone about my problems, sharing them with anyone I trust, as he mentioned afterward that it's not sustainable to keep them deep down within. It took me a few years before I actually took his advice. I had been thinking about it for years, but due to my personality, I didn't take much action. So yeah, that's the second piece of advice. I don't know what else to say. And yeah, I will share the third piece of advice later on. The first piece of advice was given to me sometime in 2015, and the second piece of advice was given to me in 2017, if I'm not mistaken. As for the third piece of advice, we'll talk about that later on. Other than that, thank you for listening. I was about to cry just now, but I didn't. So yeah, take care. Bye. Bye.

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