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!