On Scholarships - let's get down to brass tacks

25th May, 2011

To: All SPM top-scorers in 2011 who did not get the JPA scholarship of their dreams and who are complaining

c.c. editor@thestar.com.my, editor@themalaysianinsider.com, editor@malaysiakini.com, chenghai@thesundaily.com, news@nstp.com.my

Listen here,

Stop whining and moaning. The world has not ended. Scholarships are a privilege, not a right. It's "a grant-in-aid to a student (as by a college or foundation)" (Merriam-Webster).

Yes, you did very well for your SPM exams. Bravo! Getting to study for free overseas in the course of your choice is not a given. Deal with it! People generally do not like those with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement.

Aren't you, the crème de la crème of SPM 2011 eager to prove to us that you indeed ARE smart? You've hit a bump in your road to get an education. Now what? Whine and moan? Is that all your top-scoring brains can come up with?

Make us proud.
Make your parents proud. Think outside the box, strategise, do you research, and find a solution. Life has given you a leg up - you have a decent brain. For goodness' sake, USE IT!!!

I suggest you read the following, because it will help you in the coming years.

Rule No. 1: Life is not fair. Get used to it.

Rule No. 2: The real world won't care as much about your self-esteem as much as your school does. It'll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.

Rule No. 3: Sorry, you won't make $40,000 a year right out of high school.

Rule No. 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait 'til you get a boss. When you screw up, he's not going to ask you how you feel about it.

Rule No. 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity.

Rule No. 6: If you screw up, you are responsible. This is the flip side of "It's my life," and "You're not the boss of me,"

Rule No. 7: Before you were born your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way paying your bills, cleaning up your room and listening to you tell them how idealistic you are. And by the way, before you save the rain forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your bedroom.

Rule No. 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn't.

Rule No. 9: Life is not divided into semesters, and you don't get summers off. Not even Easter break. They expect you to show up every day. For eight hours. And you don't get a new life every 10 weeks. It just goes on and on. While we're at it, very few jobs are interested in fostering your self-expression or helping you find yourself. Fewer still lead to self-realization. (See Rule No. 1 and Rule No. 2.)

Rule No. 10: Television is not real life. Your life is not a sitcom. Your problems will not all be solved in 30 minutes, minus time for commercials. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to jobs.

Rule No. 11: Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.

Rule No. 12: Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you're out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That's what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for "expressing yourself" with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.

Rule No. 13: You are not immortal.

Rule No. 14: Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school's a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you'll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now. You're welcome.

It's not all doom and gloom. Really. Just start doing something constructive. Whining and groaning to the newspapers is NOT "doing something constructive".

The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.