Why Waiting Hurts…And What Does That Mean

Jingle bells, Santa displays and fake plastic mistletoe decorate the shops and streets of Hong Kong. With mixed feelings I become aware that December is already approaching at a hundred miles an hour. Which also means it’s been nearly three months since school started. Time flies, I think to myself. Sometimes it seems to me that the summer vacation was just yesterday, but now I’m so close to completing my UCAS application form.

Time flies. But it also drags.

Upon submitting my UCAS application form there will be nothing more left for me to do for my application process in a few months. No more personal statement to write, no more forms to fill, no more UCAS “to-do-lists” to complete. And quite frankly, I can see that I will miss that just a little.

Waiting for a reply from universities that I’ve applied for is, well, not easy. We’re born to be impatient, especially when it’s about issues which really matter a lot. Waiting hurts. It really does. Sometimes I so get nervous I am briefly incapacitated when I think about the long, long time to wait.

This is also my first time experiencing this kind of “waiting marathon”. At home, and even though I know it’s not a big deal, when the Internet Explorer’s loading 20 per cent slower than it usually does, I get miffed. At school, I get to know my test and exam results within weeks. But now we’re talking about four months…

But then on second thoughts, the art of “waiting” is in fact a lifelong lesson I’m now learning. Waiting 101: I’ve to learn to be patient despite being nervous about the UCAS application. Impatience is like quicksand: keep telling oneself how bad it is to wait and one only keeps sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss of impatience. Therefore I always remind myself that I should shift my focus from pondering and worrying about the application to concentrating on my studies to best prepare for my public exams in March.

As long as I learn to cope with them, my worries can actually turn into some kind of excitement. Think about the good side: this time next year I might be spending my Christmas in the UK!

Running...Out of Time

The other day I went to the cinema to watch In Time. One common goal that Will Salas, the protagonist of the film, and I grudgingly share is: Can I have more time? The clock of UCAS application keeps ticking and ticking but I have not submitted by UCAS application. University choices? Check. Personal Statement? Check. Required English Tests, at least for those of us who need them? Check. So what exactly am I waiting for?

If you still haven’t submitted your UCAS application like me, here’s one quick suggestion: it may be helpful to leave yourself with a cooling-off period so that you can reconsider and re-evaluate your decisions before the ultimate, finalized application. Let’s admit it: at times we are rather impulsive when making decisions. We come up with silly and reckless ideas that we might regret or reject with clearer thinking.

The cooling-off period is probably a good time to have deep(er) conversations and seek final advice, especially from parents and possibly from professionals. It could actually be surprisingly helpful. I’m lucky to have at school teachers who offer concrete and useful advice for my university choices and provide various solutions for any of my enquiries.

Thanks to the “mentor programme” of my school, I have been assigned a mentor who is a journalist, just as one day I hope to be. And of course, I’ve been constantly asking my parents and friends for their opinions. Googling the most updated information about universities helps a lot too. Most of my friends have been glued to their computers, going through every single article related to tertiary studies both locally and overseas.

But at the same time, I’ve got to keep in mind that other people’s advice is merely helping me with the finalization of my application. I’m trying to take the good and reasonable advice, but when it comes to my aspirations, I know I need to stand firm in what I’m passionate about doing and not be daunted by conflicting opinions. I’m going to stay true to myself and believe in myself. I hope you will too!

Notwithstanding it’s still two months from the official UCAS application deadline, I must bear in mind that there isn’t much time for lingering without making any actual progress. I hope to make up my final decisions and submit my UCAS application within one week or two. How about you?

A Long Way to Go

‘NO.’ Simple and clear. That’s what my dad said when I raised the question of pursuing my tertiary education in the UK. It was a money issue.

For the next few months I tried every possible way to persuade him to change his mind. I nagged. I coaxed. I listed out the all the pros and cons of studying in the UK. I talked about I how much love British culture. I explained how I hoped to learn in an English-speaking environment. Under the seemingly endless son-to-dad “pressure”, well, he agreed to give me a chance under the condition that the university is good enough.

Studying in the UK, regardless of the depreciation of the British pound, is still more of less a luxurious good for a student in Asia. The cost of living in the UK is high by anyone’s standards. And on top of that, the tuition fee is another concern for my middle-income family. After all, studying abroad is not something that everyone could afford.

But at the same time, studying in the UK is an absolutely invaluable lifetime experience for me as an international student. Not to mention it would be a whole new environment, but the UK also has some of the world’s finest universities. What’s more is that I truly enjoy British culture. So much so that I’ve been trying very hard but failing to imitate Daniel Craig’s James Bond accent.

Now I have the chance of applying for universities in the UK. However, despite a clear goal, there’s still a long way to go until I get to study in the UK. My brain is twisted and tangled as I am typing this piece, deciding on which five university choices I should fill in my UCAS application.