The Last Day

Yesterday I had my last lecture. Today I gave my last project presentation. Two weeks from now, I'll be having my final paper.

It's going to end soon. Somehow, it feels time went by really fast, even though three years does seem really long.

Next up, the last leg. The highest hurdle. The final sprint. Then comes the next educational advancement.

I had thought today was going to be perfect. All we needed to do when we met at 11, would be to compile whatever we had, print the report, bind it, and head to class happily for the last presentation. It was my worst nightmare. Out of the blue, I was made the leader, which made me wonder if it was because I did most of the non-theoretical work, which was more demanding than typing the report itself. My team mates did produce work, but as most of our work was done at the eleventh hour, I was utterly disappointed. Not in them, but in myself. So what if I had gone 3 days without sleep? I should have checked on them, not expect that they would do everything just in time for compilation and printing today. A herd of lost sheep without their lead dog, make easy prey for the wolves.

I had learnt my lesson the hard way 6 months ago. I wanted very much to have 0 last minute efforts this time round. The opposite happened. With 10 times the magnitude from before, it striked back really hard, and with a vengeance. I hate sub-standard work. I'm thankful I am not my tutor. I absolutely detest submitting work with language errors in them. Just 1 error, is enough to start the bomb ticking. While engineers are extremely meticulous and perfect perfectionists in their calculations, dimensions and drawings, I'm relatively relaxed in that zone. Just ensure the necessary stuff is there, and we're done. Guess I should tweak my mindset a little more.

Now that it's over, all I can do is move on. nothing is going to change the fact we did very little, the bare minimum. It's alright to be average, but it's not alright to be below average. Deep down, I was extremely upset, but there was nothing I could do. My team wasn't at fault. I was wrong not to check on them, to give them that push. Not knowing I was the leader, only made things worse. If I had asked them to return on Monday at the very least, we would have been walking home happily at 3.15pm. The last day of school, I don't want it to be the final day of my formal education.

I am going to make a vow right here, right now. After graduating, I am going to continue studying the English language. If I were offered a seat in a university, I will not repeat any mistake from the past three years. Academics, life skills, whatever's not right. There are thousands vying for those limited seats. I want to prove, my results may not be outstanding, but I possess e the potential to go further than the best.