Long due post (sebenarnya dah lama dah tulis dan edited, cuma tak post2 jer…. cc Nurul Khairiah Yusof. Nak baca yg 3 chapters before this boleh pergi my profile page and baca the pinned post…
A Passion for Accounting
When I first enrolled into MRSM Beseri in the pure science stream (that is with Additional Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology as my electives), I had assumed I could take Accounting as my 10th subject, which was what I would have done in my previous school, Kolej Sultan Abdul Hamid. However, I soon found out that this option was not readily available.
My options were to (A) register for Accounting as my 10th subject and self-study it, or (B) swap one of my other elective subjects for Accounting. Now, while I believe in teaching yourself to learn more effectively, I did not have the confidence to self-study accounting for such an important time in my life since my SPM results would very much determine my future. After discussing things with my parents, I switched from Biology to Accounting and eagerly joined my new classmates.
By the time this all came to pass, I was at least 1 ½ months behind everyone else in the subject and had to work hard to catch up. I was and am ever thankful to my dedicated teacher and kind classmates who helped me out.
By the end of our first semester, I received full marks on my Accounting paper. My success in this subject would land me top place every consecutive semester until my SPM trial exam, when I, unfortunately, made a careless mistake that cost me top place. I dropped to second place and got an earful from my teacher for my costly, careless mistake. To this day I am not sure whether it was the pressure to perform or pure carelessness that happened, but it is no use crying over spilled milk.
The Road to Engineering
As I’ve explained before, the SPM trial exam carries more importance than the actual SPM exam since offers for scholarships are based on our results in the trial exams. At the same time, the year I took my SPM also happened to be when the Asian Financial Crisis was at its peak so it was a dry time for scholarships.
Luckily for me, I did well enough to receive several offers.
The first offer I received was 2 weeks after I completed my SPM exam. This was for a convertible loan (rather than a confirmed scholarship) to study engineering at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) under their Forecast program. As I was not sure whether I would get any other offers, I went ahead and accepted it.
One month into my studies at UTM, I received an offer from Telekom Malaysia (TM) for a scholarship also in engineering at Universiti Telekom (UNITELE), which was later known as Multimedia University (MMU). After discussing it with my parents, I decided to leave UTM and accept the offer from UniTel. It wasn’t a hard decision to make as it was a scholarship. And so, off I went to UNITELE in Melaka.
At this point, I was still wondering whether I would get any offer to study Accountancy as a major, but considering the ongoing financial crisis, I decided to see where my path led me.
My next scholarship offer arrived a little while before my SPM results were announced. This time it was a scholarship from Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) to study engineering first in their local campus Universiti Tenaga (UNITEN) and then later overseas in the United States of America (US). This was a huge opportunity for me. I was very excited and keen.
However, two things stopped me from proceeding immediately. One was that the scholarship would take effect only if I did well in my SPM (the results were still not out yet), and the second was the scholarship contract I signed with TM. While I couldn’t do anything about my results but wait (and I had reasonable confidence my results would be good), I needed to figure out an exit from my scholarship agreement with TM.
This led to my first-ever legal review with a lawyer who happened to be our neighbor in Alor Setar. According to him, the contract with TM was not binding as I had signed it before turning 18. With this information, I officially contacted TM to request to be released, with a willingness to pay back any costs incurred by the few months I had already spent in UNITELE.
Long story short, I was released from my agreement with TM after meeting with a representative of the Management of Yayasan Telekom. One consequence of this was that I was blacklisted by Yayasan Telekom.
My SPM results were announced and I had the grades needed to accept the TNB offer of scholarship. A few months later while enrolled in UNITEN, I did receive another offer to pursue accountancy at last!
Accepting My Circumstances
This time, I didn’t request a release from TNB and continued with my studies at UNITEN, waving a sad goodbye to the accountancy offer. The reason for this was that I had signed with TNB after my 18th birthday, making the contract binding. Breaking that contract would have incurred a penalty that would no doubt be a financial burden to me and my family.
Looking back, I wonder what my life would have been like if I had received the accountancy offer sooner. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.
However, I still aspired to take something related to accountancy and was planning to take the professional papers after I completed my engineering degree. In the meantime, I put all my energy into my studies at UNITEN (I know of a lot of people who would disagree with this statement) so that I could be accepted into a top university in the US.
In my next chapter, I’ll share how I was accepted into the very prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and why I felt it wasn’t the right decision then.
