Courage to Pursue What You Interested In
I’ve always believed that experiences could shape one’s personality, and affect one’s life. I am a good example of this scenario. When I was young, I was a mischievous girl, who liked playing games, doing sports, and enjoyed the brisk of the outdoors. Although I didn’t perform well academically, I’ve always liked to be free, and would always try exciting activities. I was different from my sister, who was smart, organised, very clear on what she liked, and possessed a great sense of arts. Because of that, there always this passive, “silent” comparison made between us among our friends and relatives. It made me feel so low, but at the same time, I looked up to her.
When I was 9 years old, I was able to make it to the top class. It was then that I started to realise that I had to study hard. After all the hard work, I managed to ace my exams with flying colours. After form 5, I was stuck, not knowing what step I should take next for my future. I had the impression that since I was good at memorising and studying, I could become a lawyer. Hence, I decided to pursue A-levels for a year and a half in Advance Tertiery College (ATC), a law school, with a scholarship I earned prior to enrolling for this course. However, things did not
work out the way I wanted them to. After my A-levels, I interned at a law firm for a short period of time to confirm whether I really wanted to continue down this path. In the end, I decided that law was not what I liked or what I wanted to pursue. Therefore, I decided to not pursue my law degree, and enrolled in a degree majoring in Banking and Finance at UTAR Kampar. This decision wasn’t made based on my interest, rather it was just me conforming to the norm since most of my friends chose to study finance-related programmes. Despite that, I graduated from
UTAR, and even had my first job as a credit control executive.
However, it was so miserable for me as the job was too routine-based, where I was required to do the same thing over and over again, everyday. I worked there for one and a half year.
A year ago, I decided to resign from my job in the finance department, and focused on exploring and pursuing something that I was interested in. I was never a risk-taker, but I plucked up the courage to pursue a career in graphic design. This decision was not made out of impulse, but through a long period of thinking. Throughout the thinking process, I noticed that I actually had this interest in graphic design since I did my internship in my church two years prior. Needless to say, my internship was about doing finance work, but, I’d always ask my supervisor to give me some design works to do because i really enjoyed them. Previously, I was not brave enough to pursue it due to self-condemnation, thinking that I was not capable of doing it. However, I just craved for something different in my 20s.
Then, I started to do some research and found an online learning platform called Udemy. It enabled me to self-learned graphic design within a short period of time, and with minimal costs. At the same time, my loss was that there was no one in this process with me. I had to be disciplined enough to learn from scratch all alone. Frankly, it was lonely and stressful to pursue something that is so new to me without anyone to share my ups and downs with. I didn’t wanna give up only to regret doing so in the future, so I gave my all into learning. I’d spend a lot of hours to complete my portfolio. Even though the process was hard, but it made me happy to do something that I liked.
Half a year later, I was all ready. I decided to find a job as a graphic designer. I had mixed feelings, being excited but worried and stressed at the same time. When I sent out my resumes, I started to doubt my own decision. “Did I make a mistake?” , “Am I not be careful enough when I made this decision?”, “Do I really want to be a graphic designer?”. All these negative thoughts just rushed into my mind. Not long after, I received an email from a company, which was Rebelphase. Even with zero experience in this field of work, they were willing to give me this opportunity to learn and work here as a graphic designer.
I guess this is the rebel story that I will be proud of in my life.
