SYTYHIA

Salam all.

BENL tu apa?

Oh, as in BANKING ke?

I have been hearing these questions for my whole life. And I have to admit that each time they asked, I had to dig out the innermost sense of humour to answer them haha. In case you haven’t heard, BENL stands for Bachelor of Human Sciences (English Language and Literature). I guess the acronym makes it less familiar compared to other English programs like TESOL or TEFL etc. Anyways we’ll get back to that later because today’s topic is SO YOU THINK YOU HAVE IT ALL hah capslock ni mak jemah.

So here’s how it goes.

I have many friends, well in a way. Most of them are currently doing their first degree in local universities and some are doing it overseas. Either way, the point is that we all are very much familiar with the concept of tertiary education. The more As you got, the higher the chance for you to get into the so-called best colleges, doing what they call- the professional courses (medicine, laws, pharmacy, engineering etc). Well, that’s pretty much of it. And never occurred in my mind any disrespect towards the system. In fact, I do believe that they did pretty good job in celebrating the talents in people.

BUT.

Often we forget that each one of us is given different skills and abilities. Some people are good in juggling numbers while some are good in equations and formulas. Some have the abilities to create and fix things while the others prefer preserving human medium of communication intact. Some dedicate their whole life to understand animals and the anatomy of their different body parts while some have the talent in singing and dancing. Some can cook very well while some are better in converting life into images. Some are meant to help people with mental disabilities and some make really great coins out of the financial field. Some are good in using words while others prefer sports as a career.

Source: Google images

To sum up, different people have different kinds of intelligence and skills. That is why we live in a heterogeneous world. We benefit each other-that’s how it works. The farmers grow broccoli for the engineers who in return, provide the best living facilities. The world cannot have all human beings doing the same thing for living or else, we will neither progress or even worst, the word ‘generation’ can be nonsensical at a certain level.

I guess I have made the point clear. So, why are there people who still cannot tolerate the fact that we all possess different kinds of intelligence? Why must we look down at people who are engaged in the so-called non-professional fields? In fact, why do we classify human knowledge-s into the cherished and the undesirables?

    1-      Weh, seriously ada ke orang nak ambil kau kerja dengan course tu?

    2-      Oh. Aku ingat kau ambil language je and nanti boleh kerja dekat big companies. Tak sangka pulak kau ambil literature sekali.

Honestly, I’d really like to stupidly answer yes to the first question and for question 2, I really don’t have an answer since to begin with, it does not make sense for an English major to think that language and literature are separable. But cheers to 4 years of the long- hardly repressed answer below; I think I would die a happy woman to say this.

It does not matter, at least to me what course you are doing or which university you are from. What matters is your performance- doing the best at what you choose to do. Instead of comparing your course to other people’s courses, you could have saved those hours of worries and laments to read some books or to grow some bananas. Kalau belajar kos yang masyur atau dekat university yang terkemuka tapi tak perform well pun, tiada gunanya. As for me, though it took a year for me to figure out which way to go, I am now happy and grateful to be able to do what I love and you are so going to hate it but I indeed, am getting better at my own phase as the semesters run. You know why? Because I do not waste my time looking down at other people and I have stopped competing with other people. I compete with myself and that keeps me thrilled and electrified. Having said that, I now have every right to express that I am setting myself away from judging people’s essence and their values in future job market based on what they do and I was never intimidated by everything that people say about my course because goddamit people, I FREAKIN' LOVE IT!