My Convocation

(Yeah this is a very late post, I am yet to get internet access at home, and my workplace blocked all blogging sites.)

Convocation is an elaborate ceremony to honour the achievements of higher education students of graduating from their respective programmes. It is time-consuming, energy-consuming, and worst of all, money-consuming. To some, it is tedious, and I am one of them. But, after all the tiring events, I have to say, I'm glad I went through all that.

When I finished my last final exam paper in UTP, a sudden sadness struck me deep, that everything I enjoyed here for five years is going to end. However, since then, I've moved on, accepting that I shall start a new life of working; a non-reversible clock to a life that I shall live probably until I die, accepting that probably the nice things I enjoyed during my college days will never be experienced again (or even if we do, it will never be as sweet as it used to be). But then, convocation gives me the opportunity to meet my friends in a huge gathering that - probably it is safe to say now - I will never get to see in such a mass gathering as this again.

And there are more tiny little things that made me smile. The chancellor award is an award awarded to the highest achieving student of that convocation in all categories. Amazingly, one of my friend who I would never thought would win, won. Why I would never thought someone like her would win? She is definitely not the default type of a chancellor award winner. A huge congratulations to her. It is great that someone like her won. Though whenever someone wins something, I always hoped it would be me. The trophy is really nice. I always hoped to be the best but always fell short. I told that to my friend, and a simple reply from him gave me a huge impact, a harsh awakening to reality. I told him, I could've scored 4.0 every semester if I wanted to, I only needed to put in a little bit more effort, and he said, "And so does everyone. Thing is, you didn't put in that effort, so how different are you from the rest?"

Elsewhere, I had a great time with my long-time friends. Five years is the longest period of time that I've spent studying at one same place. Probably the only thing that's lacking is that I didn't get to spend time with all of my friends. I owe all of you a lot for all the great times we had. And thank you for all of you who covered all my expenses throughout my stay, I posted in my previous post to treat everyone with my first salary and it is shameful it is the other way round, though at the same time I am incredibly grateful.

Yeah, things will never be the same again. We will never be able to gather everyone like this again, but at least I know one certain thing: the world is only going to be smaller and smaller, and as technology moves forward (and becomes more affordable) our separation is only going to be less, and it is no longer a barrier for us to meet one another again.

I hate to say 'goodbye', I'd rather say 'see you', because I know we will.