Someday

I need to be reminded sometimes of how my life here in LSE has been everything my heart had been hoping for. From being constantly in the last classes in my top all girls Primary and Secondary school, I had been implicitly told that I wasn't good enough, not smart enough to amount to much in life. Teachers said we were lazy, and a teacher scolded me in front of the class saying I was a disgrace to my family and stupid. I cried. I cried everytime inside when I got a mark in the 50s. It seemed that I was doomed to failure. But somehow, I managed to nudge my way into yet another top Junior College. On results day I cried out of relief, not happiness.

At Junior College I was surrounded by friends who scored brilliantly and were brilliant in their own manner. I still scored 50s no matter how much they tried to help me. I cried again. I got scolded by the principal for doing badly in Chinese and being the last for Math. I got more stressed. I started getting anxiety attacks over academics. Results day I felt my heart sink deeper and deeper as rows and rows of people left the seats and went on stage. The feeling of being left behind, shouted you are a failure to everyone, especially myself. My lack of academic capability was clear for everyone to see it seemed, and I felt naked. My heart had been broken again.

Then I got into LSE, the reason why I had spent two years working my life away straight. I had never given up fighting what everyone had told me for 12 years of my life, that I was stupid and unworthy of academia. The feeling of intellectual inferiority still plagues me today, but I know that as long as I keep trying and fighting I have already succeeded in my own small way. I am tired of feeling and thinking that nothing I do will ever be good enough.