In A Moment When I Hesitated

My classification is finally out. After 4 + 1/2 years of uni, going through some of the dreaded assignments and 8am to 6pm lecture/tutorial on most days, not to mention the sleepless nights editing long essays to make sure all the t's are crossed and the i's dotted and the grammar is spot-on, my result glares at me, forcing me to accept and beckoning me to make the next move.

Considering my academic performance while in UBD which doesn't actually add up to flawless or excellent, I know I should be lucky to get what I got. Most people will say getting a 2:2 for the degree course that I was majoring in, is a very good enough result. In fact, when I look at my friends' results who got 2:1 and tell them that I envy them, they'll say, "Liat lah course mu, lebih payah kali ah than mine."

I never really did agree on this common misconception that being a TESL student is a much harder course to be in than any other and that entry requirements are always hard to fulfill. The only reason, I believe, why TESL course and other courses like it has a number of students you can count on your two hands, is maybe because many people have difficulties in grasping the language, or can't be bothered with learning and/or learning about the language, per se. If it was the otherwise, I bet there'd be more students enrolled in the course, then we'll have unlimited supply of local English Language teachers and CfBT would run out of business.

Not to digress any further, the point is that I cannot help but feel that I know I could have gotten a better result than just a 2:2, regardless of the fact whether it was a TESL course or a Business Administration course. If only I made that choice to want to do better in my assignments and projects, if only I made that choice to complete them on time often, if only I was more vocal in class instead of accepting the what-is, but most of all, if only I believed in myself that I can be more than just average or good.

If that wasn't enough of a contemplation, what I was going to do next suddenly became a vague certainty. I remembered when I first started uni, there was no doubt in my mind that I was committed into becoming an English Language teacher. That I knew right after I graduate, there was no hesitation into which career path I would dive into immediately. But as I stood in front of the elevators at Bahagian Pengambilan Guru at Ong Sum Ping, with my application forms and my certifications in hand, a thought crossed my mind and the realisation set in almost too quickly.

"Do you really want to send in that form and go on to become a teacher?"

"I thought you said you were meant for greater things - is all this part of that?"

In what amount of time there was during the elevator ride up to the 4th floor, streams of thoughts began, each justifications of what I was about to do or not do. And for a moment in time, the hesitation was over-powering.

And so, as I walked back to the car, smiling to myself for the decision I had just made earlier, I thought to myself,

"What the hell was I thinking?! Of course I want to be an English Language teacher!"