UNCERTAINTY

One thing that I hate is uncertainty.

Being made to wait around and look stupid doing nothing at all while there are actually a ton of things to do but you just don’t know how to do it that’s why you are made to wait around and look stupid doing nothing.

You pretend to look busy by checking something on your hand phone while in fact there is nothing on your screen except for ‘MY CELCOM’ or ‘MY MAXIS’. You avoid looking like you have nothing to do for fear people might think you are lazy and have nothing better to do. The key word is ‘busy’, to make you have a lot to do, so that people would not disturb you and give you works to do as this might disrupt your idealistic existence.

If you bring laptop to school, you try so hard to stare at your screen even though you were just staring at your desktop wallpaper. When people come passing by your work cubicle and try to peer in your laptop, trying to see all the shenanigans that you are indulging in the moment, you switch the erotic novel you were reading into your students’ name list. Well, it is no good if you get caught, is what they say.
Then, when people give you works to do, you never say no, accept it and suck it up and pretend you know everything in the world including how to fix the broken pipes, how to motivate students who come to school out of boredom being at home, and how to teach subjects that you have no pedagogical or even the content knowledge to teach. Hey, the perks of the working world.

Being a student at a teachers’ training college, nothing is for sure. Being a student in a twinning programme, even worse when nobody knows anything, because the jurisdiction is not clear, is it the responsibility of the university which gives you your degree? Or is it the responsibility of the college, which gives you 100 year old hostel to live in? And the holidays were definitely a pain in the ass. At the university, at least they have this ‘takwim’ where you could refer all the holidays that were supposed to happen. So, being a Kelantanese, I always had problem buying holiday ticket to go back to my hometown as the tickets would always be sold out. Does not matter whether they holiday is only for 3 days, the tickets from JB or KL to KB would always be sold out. God, I so envy my brother who is studying in KMPP. His college provides transportation for the students to go back to their hometown. How cool is that? He does not have to pay for taxi or Komuter to get to the bus station and he does not have to deal with the anxiety and panic of missing the bus/train that you have to take to go back to your hometown. Not to mention, he does not have to kill for the ticket as there is enough room for every students to go back to their hometown.

Uncertainty sucks. Looking stupid sucks. Doing nothing sucks. It makes your brain rot. It is not medically proven but you can practically listen to your brain rusting away as a result of you not using it. Or watching too much porn. Or listening to too much ridiculous songs about nothing. Or having nothing intelligent to talk about. Seriously, when you are not studying, you are lost for things to think about. I’d rather think about ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ rather than doing nothing. Or perhaps watching an ancient movie with Elizabeth Taylor in it because people said it might help in understanding the drama of ‘Antony and Cleopatra’. I’d rather sit in a boring lecture for 3 hours, taking down notes from a lazy ass lecturer who might as well just give us the PowerPoint Presentation that he downloaded from the Internet. Or thinking of a thesis statement to support my argument for a position paper. Oh hell yeah, I’d rather be a student, helpless and begging for mercy from our lecturers, fighting for Raya ticket and feeling frustrated over a proposition for a paper that was rejected, and feeling like a dumbshit after wasting a gallon of tears over dumbshit boyfriend. Those were the golden days of sufferings. Being in the university and college, all alone, wrapped up in your hellish cocoon, feeding on steady diet of hate and wrath. Those were the days that made you. Those were the days that made you, simply you. I had wished that time flies sooner when I was studying because I long for holidays and I feel frustrated when I had to back to university or college when the holiday was over (my brother is feeling this now). I had wished that the last day when I was back home would freeze so I can be with my family just a second longer. I had wished for my family to move to wherever I was studying so I can go back home like everyday after class. How I wished for all those impossible things to happen. But it did not. And I braced myself everyday for every stupid days to come. And those were the days that made me resilient to anything that might come my way. Those were the days that toughen me up, making me able to handle anything and everything that might happen.

P/S: Notice how this post is getting longer by the paragraph?

Anyway, the bottom line is my post has lost its track as the paragraph continues but I can’t help myself, shit happens, you know? Who cares? I don’t. Uncertainty sucks but it also makes you ignore the small lingering noise in your mind, it makes you patient, and it makes you not push people around to get the certainty that you are craving for. The bottom line is, again, uncertainty is a negative state, but it might help you shape who you are positively.