Very Dramatic Blessing in disguise

Today started off with a really bad wave of bad, and ended up being all resolved, such that i can only say that God has his remarkable ways of delivering us!

First of all, i was supposed to have an orientation session; the first time getting shown around my new school. but i couldnt go, since i couldnt take off. instead, i had to go to east coast park for a lame squadron run.

Waking up really early and taking public transport to ECP for the first time, i didnt know where to alight, and unsure of where the meeting location is. I found out that i had alighted a freaking 4km away from the meeting place, and spent the next half an hour and all of my energy running there. I reached there all sweaty, tired and sore, but still 30mins late. No sympathy or mercy given; instead i had 3 off days deducted. Having just enough off to go for my studies, losing 3 would mean missing 3 days of classes.

After all negotiations fell through and i have to accept my verdict, i spent the seemingly endless journey back home worrying about the lessons i would have to miss and the impact of it all... ill be off to a bad start, lagging behind my peers, having less contact time, losing attendance, and in the meanwhile rotting away in camp! what do i tell ppl or the lecturers? the first thing i knew i had to do then is to search the student portal for my timetable, and plan accordingly.

So i did manage to find a user-unfriendly and poorly informative timetable in my portal. And to my horror, i found that i would have to study ENGLISH for university! Immediately i pointed at the fact that i had submitted my O level transcripts to UNLV only after the deadline, and therefore i was still not given an exemption for that. Now im in for a bigger problem - im in the wrong batch! im gonna be studying extra stuff, taking my english lessons all over again with a whole class of foreign students who didnt take O levels! Im going to be studying the full 3 years!.. Or so i thought.

I called up the school, and the people in charge of admissions were all on leave. theres nobody around able to clear my burning doubts until 4 days later!
I could feel the worry anxiety building up into a headache, mental fatigue, and feverishness setting in. I couldnt possibly wait out this heartstopping suspense for 4 days...

Well then i saw a link in one of the emails received today, of an invitation for all new UNLV students to join a facebook group - an initiative by the seniors to create a social platform for us. I thought of an idea that brought much hope - ask my fellows through facebook! ignoring any awkwardness, i asked a few strangers who i might get to know soon, about the orientation i missed, and their situation.

It is then i found out, i am not in the wrong class after all! the rest sent in their o level transcripts and didnt get exempted from english either.. and by comparing modules, i got a much clearer picture on how the modules and exemptions work. all my doubts were quickly cleared, and i breathed a huge sigh of relief to know that everything is normal for me.

As to deal with the missing of lessons, i learnt that my timetable is shockingly empty. Exemptions had cut my total hours a week by more than half, leaving mondays and wednesdays without classes. There; i can go back to camp on those days! mons and weds are also days with important events fall, such as my FFI and ORD day. it all falls into place!

So now that i look back at it, the incident in the morning, aside from being a learning experience in itself, pushed me to read through all my school-related emails (to find my timetable) and get a clear view of everything - something i would probably be lazy to do otherwise. i am then just in time to join the facebook group, talk to ppl, get my doubts cleared, and at the same time make friends!

This might not be the end of the story. but the story as it is till this point, is a wonderful experience of blessings in disguise.

Closing in!

Only 2 weeks remain, before i make a quick transition from NS life overlapping into Uni life. My juniors have come in, and have taken up most of the work. The seniors can now relax and do nothing more than tell them what to do. The 10 off days given to all of us so close to our ORD now seems possible to be cleared, since every day 75% of us need not be around. And for the few more days in september, each senior only needs to go back once a week! Its all coming to a close now, and the superiors are slowly letting us go.

Once university starts, its gonna be a whole new phase of life. Excited i am, but also feeling the pressure to make it good. Its gonna be a really different lifestyle.. Hopefully it would bring refreshing changes for the better!