Game of life

** Yellow - Coldplay **

Few years back, I was a girl in blue and white uniform with a whole bucket of attitude. A cocktail of raging teenage hormones and a so-called rebellious heart, I was a spectacular specimen to the school. Not really the straight A's student, neither the one hidden beneath thick revision book I was an ordinary plain Jane without any clear opinion about what she want to be in 5 years. Back then, I think I must have changed my dream at least twice within a book or once I finished another book of Princess Diaries or Cecelia Ahern.

For the past week I have been going back to my school SMK King George V, Seremban not as a student, but as a teacher-in-training. As a part of my four year course, the TESLians are required to have a one week SOP in between our second/third year of study. SOP is a short program where we would go to a real school and have a real experience of being in a real school as a real teacher. Lol, pardon for the REALness of my previous sentence.Anyway, that's the main reason of this post as I am thrilled of the one-week of life changing experience. Fuhh ayat.

Going back to the old school was not something I would ever dream of, what more to become an English teacher. I believed fate has brought me to where I am now, and I could not be more grateful of the experience I had for the past three years of TESL. As one of my ex teacher said to me " tak sangka awak dalam banyak banyak jadi cikgu " ( who would have expect you, out of many finally becoming a teacher ). Lol teacher, whatever that might mean? Am I that bad back then?

But really, being physically in class in a different role allows me to see things differently. One thing for sure, if you try to secretly eat in the class, trust me teachers will know. They just chose to ignore it. Lol, I dont remember if there's a time when I didnt eat or sleep in class. Oh and another not-so-related thing is that, I found out that teachers are the BIGGEST gossiper ever ( not being biased but this is from my observation ) . So its true what my sexist male lecturer have been talking about all these time haha. Anyway, on the last day I met the Headmaster just as a formality and such but we end up talking almost two hours just about teaching life etc. Now, let me tell you something back then I was not a fan of the pengetua neither I'm one of the troublemaker who get canned weekly by him. So I vaguely know him as a person, I just know that he's one of the teacher who talks alot during perhimpunan ( assembly ). He checked my reports one by one and commented on everything. Boy, I think I was either mumbling or chattering nonsense at the time. He questioned my every comments and ask my opinions on what I think was wrong.

One thing I remember tho, he said this :

" Celebrate every little success " 

Such short sentence yet meant so much. We were discussing about some of the low students who are shy on having to speak English in school which resulted in a poor English proficiency. Understanding the norms of Malay students ( in certain places and to certain people. Dont mean to be judgmental here ) , if you speak 'orang putih' ( English ) outside of the English period you will be labelled as 'bajet' 'perasan' and showing off. I had an experience of myself when I first moved to Seremban but it only lasted like for a few months.Once I started to pick up the 'nogori' and bahasa pasar there's no turning back for me lol. 

Okay so back to the context. So regarding these poor kids, speaking/communication in English seems like a very big deal for them hence they developed a fear towards the language itself. This will eventually leads to hatred which makes us, the teachers very hard to create the 'spark of interest' towards the language. So as a teacher, regardless any subject it is very important to acknowledge every success/achievements no matter how small they are . Psychologically, it does have a positive effect to the students whereas they have this certain pride of being able to achieve something finally. 

Well the same concept applied in life too. There will be time when we feel like a total loser and there's no hope whatsoever for us in life. And when we finally pull ourselves back up, along the way there will be little accidents and we go back to square one - i'm a total loser.that's it. Yup, been there done that. Coincidentally, when I was in one of the 'I'm a loser state' I met this person who managed to rub off some his positive aura on me- yup, he's that awesome. He is Deydos one of the speaker during APLS in Korea back in March. He said the same thing, that is 'to reward yourself with every little achievement you had'.Well, to make it simple here, imagine you had a crazy week trying to finish a project report and all you can think of is to catch up on sleep. But on Friday you finally finish the damn thing, go and treat yourself with a cone of ice cream ( or to make it more fancy, Magnum! ) .You can never go wrong with one of those icy cold custom made chocolate coated vanilla ice cream  on sticks! :D 

*while I'm writing this, I'm listening to an old song on MixFm ..cherish the night...cherish the night...* doesnt make sense but yeah, I just have to add this for the mood :) 

So yeah when in doubt, have an ice cream!