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Wah, so tired! ;A;
Somehow I've been feeling more tired each day for the past few weeks. I'm not even making much sense anymore! Haha, I don't know why, since I've been sleeping considerably better (at least, compared to how I was doing a semester before), but it's there, niggling at the back of everything else. Guh. Am I ill? I wonder what it is now. ;A;
Anyway, I managed to really trully unintentionally piss off someone today. To that person, ;A; I'm really sorry, I didn't mean for that misunderstanding to happen. But but! Let me apologize to you in person on Thursday properly, okay? ;A;
Aaaah, feeling guilty has made me even more lethargic. I feel like I'm drowning in the slow haze that Musashi keeps talking about. Musashi... how did you get that haze thing off again? ;A;
... Wait, was it even Musashi? ;A;
Memory is so bad, hearing is even worse. But my stamina! It's completely gone! ;A; And I know I might sound like I have so much time for fandom stuff, but but but! I haven't been able to keep myself awake for even just a little bit more than three hours after getting home. So.. sooo... sleeeeepy... .........
!!
Ah ah right. The reason I wanted to post... aaah, what was it again? o.o I forgot, somehow. But no matter, I think I'll just talk about something random, like graduation plans... So so so! I know I haven't posted anything here, but I posted something over at the ex-Barry blog at wordpress. PASSED THE LAE, YAY! :3 Also also! I also got high enough NMAT scores to qualify for application to UP MED! YAY YAY! X3 Excuse me while I try to dance in mind 'cause I'm physically unable. :3
Okay, mind-dancing over. So where was I... oh yeah, LAE and MED. Since I got to take the LAE first, I'm going to talk about that one first.
The UP Law Aptitude exam comes once a year, usually on the third Sunday of November. This year, the fateful date fell on November 21, 2010, and I was somehow given a very lucky (imho) 1pm timeslot. But before I get to the rantings about the exam proper and whatnot, lemme just give a short account of how the months prior to the LAE was for me.
They were, funnily easy enough to say, quite uneventful in the LAE-sense of it. :} Haha, seriously, I don't want to sound like such a douche, but I wasn't able to find time to study or review for the LAE at all. I wasn't able to... because I had no motivation to do so. In my heart, I wanted to force myself, I really did, and I even still have the reviewer I purchased from White Elephant Review Center to prove my good intentions. But somehow, everytime I saw the said reviewer, my motivation - not just part, but all of it - would just simply kill itself by jumping out our attic window into a magically-appearing vat of hot molten lava outside our house. :{
As such, I started unconsciously avoiding reviewing at all costs. I tried bringing the reviewer with me to class, but somehow, it just ended up at a holder for my class cards and pieces of yellow paper. I tried putting it in the desk next to me when I work on my computer (since I spend almost all my time there, anyway), but it just ended up getting buried under all the other junk I had lying around. I even tried reading it once when I was stuck in the toilet (oh hello thurr, constipation, is it that time of the week already?), but it just ended up... well, no, it didn't end up as toilet paper, but I ended up just fanning my self with it instead of reading it. I could glance at the pages, sure, but to actually read them and... REVIEW? O.O
---> lazee azz gurl iz lazee azz
Anyway, so I tried. I wasn't able to accomplish any reviewing, granted, but I tried. That.. counted for something right? That was how I kept rationalizing things in my head, even as the exam date drew closer and closer. Around me, I could see other examinees preparing for the exam, some cool, some not. Somehow, everyone was getting excited and doing preparations and whatnot, and it seemed to me that I was just the only one who... really didn't care at all. Or, you know, cared just that tiny bit, but wasn't really worried about things. It wasn't that I was being an overconfident ass, it was just that ever since my high school days, I had never been nervous about taking exams, big, small, life-changing or not. High school taught a lot of valuable life lessons, and one of them was that exams (the original word was trials, but whatever works, right) can only go two ways: Pass or Fail, Win or Lose. Either way, I'll still be alive when it's over and done, and if I were good enough to pass, then yay for me. But if I weren't, then I shouldn't beat myself over it too much and just move on. To other things. Bigger things. To other exams. Life's just like that. You win some, you lose a lot, but you make do with what you have.
Haha, when I say things like that, my mom would always tell me that I would make a really good and a really bad gambler. I'd be the type of gambler to steadily increase my winnings by betting on small but sure plays and look like a really smart player, but would then surprise everyone by betting it all on that one small chance of a one-hit-big-hit win. And what would be really surprising after is that win or lose, I'd still be laughing about it, since the fun is in the playing anyway. (But of course, I'd be even happier if I do win, cause you know, no one dislikes winning.)
Going back~! So yeah, I didn't review. At all. I only even barely remembered to bring the essentials to the exam date - test permit, ID, pencils, etc. (which actually reminds me, I used the wrong type of pencil, haha! Idek if that's lucky or what, since they were really strict with the other examinees, even going as far as to lending them the "correct" pencil to use.) But I was calm, extremely calm, and I was even more worried about what time I was going to get home, since my mom had been worried prior. I even wanted to drink coffee just to get that jittery, excitable feeling in my gut.
The others... they were a bit uneasy. I could tell - maybe it was because they too had not had time to review as much as they wanted? And I'm not just talking about the other two examinees with me that afternoon; it seemed like everyone there had that uneasy, nervous aura surrounding them. I felt alienated. I wanted to feel the "kaba" factor too.
But then, the proctors started making people enter the exam rooms, and about 30 minutes later, they started giving directions, etc. If you're able to read this, then you've probably already taken at least one exam like this in your lifetime. You know the drill: they hand out those answer sheets with the circles in them that you have to "completely" block out with your "number 1 mongol pencil" (I had a number 2). No going back or going ahead to other test areas that you are not supposed to be answering at the given time. Penalty will be given to violators (which I didn't get. I totally went ahead of everyone else and had turned to doodling on the scratch paper when I realized that I had finished the entire exam a good 30 minutes before it was supposed to end).
I guess by now, I really do sound like a douche. But I've really always just had an easy time taking tests like this, multiple choice and reading comprehension. Verbal reasoning. I also used to like Abstract Reasoning, since it was fun playing with the shapes, but it was during that LAE that I supposed I finally met my match. Just for the Abstract parts though. Gave me a headache.
The thing is, I just answer things. It's what I've always done, and it's what has always worked for me. With time-pressured exams like this, you can't really afford to stay at a number for more than 10 seconds. Maybe 15 tops. Regardless of the actual time limit provided, you should never spend more than that, since it would end up eating all of your time, and you wouldn't get to finish anything. I've found that answering as quickly as you can from the top of your head works quite magnificently, since if its the first answer that comes to your head, surely it must be right (or there must be a good enough reason why that was the thing you thought of). If you don't get an answer when you first read the question, trying to dig into your memory bank will do nothing for you. It just means that you really don't know the answer, and are better off guessing. Overthinking things would just overheat your brain. You can overthink things later, when you've finished answering everything and still have time to review. Or you know, if you're anything like me, doodle instead of review. Sometimes. Most of the time. XD (But of course, just answering things does not apply to abstract-related questions. And ones that involve computing. o.o)
Oh yeah, where was I? Oh right right, multiple choices. That tip of the tongue thing? Just an excuse when it's multiple choice. I mean, it's already multiple choice - meaning you get to see the right answer right there in your paper. If you really know it, and it's just at the tip of your tongue, then you should be aptly reminded BY THE WORD ITSELF RIGHT THERE ON YOUR PAPER. XDD I find people using this excuse for multiple choice exams really funny.
The thing is, multiple choice exams are designed to be easy. I mean, really, content-wise, the LAE was really un-LAE-ish. There weren't much, if any, law-specific questions, even law-related for that matter. The LAE really felt like a rehash of the UPCAT, just less science and more abstract-filled, perhaps. And just as I found with the UPCAT, I found that the LAE was more about how you successfully perform (answer exams) under all that [rather quite imaginary] pressure.
Well actually, the LAE should not be about content. Taking from the title Law APTITUDE Exam, the LAE is really just a test to see if a person has the capabilities to study law in UP. It doesn't really mean anything, it's just a way for UP to see which of the examinees are "best fit" to study in the university. Not passing the LAE only means that the person is not fit to study law in UP. Take that however you wish.
So yeah, I had a relatively easy time (dare I say great? It was actually quite boring) answering the exam. I'm not saying that I got a hundred percent, of course not. I don't have that kind of magical prowess. What I'm saying is that I didn't have a hard time during the exam. I made quite a lot of mistakes, for sure, and I can even still remember some of them. But I didn't give myself an aneurysm thinking about them. Stuff happen. This is just one of them.
Not a lot was different with the NMAT. Again, NMAT = National Medical Achievement Test. Note the lack of APTITUDE in there. But of course there was an aptitude exam (which was the one we took in the morning). The NMAT actually comprises of two parts, the Aptitude exams and the Achievement exams (not the exact terms they call them, but whatever works). The aptitude exams test you for your capability of learning medicine in the Philippines (which means all medical schools in the country, I think), and the achievement exams (given in the afternoon) are there to see how much you know (really content-wise this time) about the necessary subject areas supposed to be taken before getting into medical school.
I'm just going to skip over the aptitude exam, because it was just like the LAE, perhaps even easier. I spent more than half the alloted time drawing in the scratch papers given to us. Oh, and practicing my long division, since I kinda got the feeling that I would be needing that for the afternoon exams. (I really did this, I really did long division to pass the time. It was... nostalgic. Haha, I kinda did this in high school back in the day to pass the time during boring subjects when I couldn't fall asleep. This is the first time I've ever disclosed this. EVER.)
Anyway, I decided against getting lunch - since we were only given one hour to eat, and there were (I'm tempted to say literally) an gazillion of people there. I just didn't bother, since I wasn't hungry anyway, and the only person I knew there had gone back to her dorm to eat. Buuu. He building was closer to the exit, so she had gotten out first and had thought that I was already eating.
So during lunch I tried reading my notes from high school, trying to see if I could recall things from way back then. To my surprise, I was able to recall some slivers of the lectures and quizzes, but nothing really useful. Truthfully, I really wasn't expecting those things to be useful at all; I just thought that it would be funny to see how people would react to seeing me reading this 200-leaf notebook out in the open. Must have been quite "nakakakaba", haha! (Bully mode oh yeah.) But yeah, I started reading my notebook just to pass the time again, since I had to wait until lunch was officially over to get back to the room.
And when it was, it was finally time then for the second part of the NMAT. I didn't really know what it was that I was expecting to see, but it certainly wasn't as.. dull as what I did see. It was... just that, an exam, just like all the other exams I'd taken before. Content-intensive, certainly, but again, it didn't really incite any panic or excitement in me. It was still just as exam for me, and I still took it with the same emotions I had when I took the LAE.
I guess, when it all comes down to it, the NMAT is too a multiple choice type of exam - meaning you really just have to see the question once and the choices once to answer aptly. If you really know that answer (or if you think you do), you'd see it immediately. If you really have no idea, then nothing will come, no matter how hard you screw you eyes shut and grit your teeth and murmur mantras under your breath. There were a lot of questions there that I had no idea what the answers were - some I had already forgotten, many I could swear on my life I had never, ever, eeeeeever, encountered before. But I didn't pressure myself answering since I believed that whatever grades I get, they really are just the grades that I deserve. Nothing more, nothing less.
And I guess I do have the aptitude to get into both law and med, since I, for lack of better term, qualified for application to both of my targets. I have to admit though, that I was happier receiving the news of my NMAT grade, compared to my LAE passing. Maybe it's because of the fact that I'd always dreamed of being a doctor; I'll admit to losing sight of that for quite a long while in high school, but somehow, when I was about to go to college, the feelings of wanting to be like that person, wanting to do good like my childhood hero, all these inspiring things came back to me. I'd never wanted anything in my life as much as to be like him, I'd never had feelings as strong as that. And it saddened me somewhat - no, not somewhat, it saddened to the point of crying and blaming people and hating people when I was told that time when I was applying for the UPCAT that I couldn't put Med as any of my choices since we wouldn't have been able to afford sending me through med school anyway. Even subsidized UP Med at that.
I, at that time, I really wanted to protest. I wanted to scream and shout and just... ask why. Why couldn't I be what I wanted to be? Why couldn't I have the chance to do what I wanted to do, what I could probably do? Why wasn't I allowed to take step to my dream? So many whys. I cried a lot back then, but I told no one. Showed no one. I went through it alone, because even though I could have said something, no one would have been able to do anything anyway. It was game over for that dream. It was simply that.
[And even forcing me to put Nursing down as my first choice, damn it.]
And so I went to OrCom. A little half-heartedly, even up to now. I've always felt like I was wasting my time in OrCom, always felt like I could have gone someplace else. Not because OrCom was just a waste of time, no of course not. OrCom.. was-is comfortable. A safe place. But I just felt that I could have pursued something close to med instead, something related. It really was hard for me to let go of that dream, and I guess that was my main motivation to take the NMAT in the first place. I wanted to see if all this time, I could have been somewhere else; if all this time I really just was wasting time... that if all this time, I could have been been getting closer instead to my dream. That if all this time, I could have been getting closer to him.
That maybe, after all that time, all that wasted time, all that time spent on crying and blaming and torturing myself with the what ifs... maybe after all that, I'd finally get the chance to see if I would have made it to at least half the struggle should I have taken med. I thought the NMAT would give me the answers I wanted. Maybe even give me the direction that I've always missed in my life. That I'm still missing, at the time of this writing.
And so I took it. I took a chance, begged my parents to let me take it, even assured them that they wouldn't have to pay for the exam fees, that I would find a way to produce the money. They gave me the money anyway, after giving me those slightly guilty, slightly worried looks. I know, I get it, to you I might look like I really don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going, but I just wanted to see..
Two weeks after the exam. The results came. My target was to get a score that would at least qualify me for application to UP Med, a whooping 90%. I had a target, yes, but the real answer for me would be the percentile ranking - it was literally for me a question of how high I could go, of how high I could reach. Of how far. Maybe, finally, if I get a score high enough to impress my parents, to convince them I could, then maybe, just maybe...
And to my jubilant surprise, I did. Reach my goal, went over it even, just a little. A 92%. A 92% with barely any reviewing, with just the knowledge in my head. A 92%, with just me. No special professors to credit, just basic high school and NatSci knowledge. That 92%, I can really say that was just me, all me. God, I was so proud of myself, so very proud that even I could reach that high. I know to many UP Med people that number seems too low already, but for me... it means so much to me. More than being qualified for application, more than that, to be able to get a 92. It meant that only 8% of the population of examinees got a higher grade than me. That really really meant a lot. It meant to me that I could go there, to places that would bring me closer to becoming like my hero. To finally doing something worthwhile, for me and for others.
But then of course there was LAE. It was my father's idea to get me to take the exam, since what he really wanted was to take me to Qatar to work there after graduating law. I understand his wanting better things for me, but to be honest, I really wasn't interested in law. And to some degree, even now I sometimes feel like losing interest in it when I think about it. It's just... not what I imagined myself to be all those years before. Sometimes when I think about the prospects, it gets a little better, a little more interesting, but it's never going to be THE dream. It may become A dream, but not the one. It's not just the same.
And you may be wondering why it seems like I've already made up my mind to go to law when there's still a chance for me to go to med afterall. That may be so, that may be how it looks, but in the end, things like money, time and support are really the things that a person needs to have in order to pursue dreams. More than just the will, more than just the guts. It's those seemingly materialistic trivial things that really do make or break dreams. And in those things, I seem to have been really unlucky.
I keep telling myself that knowing the NMAT percentile is enough. Should be enough. But no matter how many times I say that, the only real consolation that I get is that I get to say I quit the fight in my terms. I wasn't booted out of it because I didn't have to capacity for it; I chose not to put my family, my loved ones through the strain of putting me through med school, even though it meant giving up the only thing that I've ever really felt so strongly about. It hurts, but I have to do it, I have to give up, because we really can't afford it. Literally, figuratively. Because of so many, so little, so trivial, so serious reasons. Just reasons. But reasons enough.
I'm crying right now, because I'm both disappointed in myself and relieved. Maybe with time, I'll come to love law. Maybe not as well, but somewhere close to that. Maybe, maybe. All those maybes. Maybe someday, somehow, I'll finally be able to let go of this regret. But not anytime soon. Surely, not anywhere near now.
Somehow I've been feeling more tired each day for the past few weeks. I'm not even making much sense anymore! Haha, I don't know why, since I've been sleeping considerably better (at least, compared to how I was doing a semester before), but it's there, niggling at the back of everything else. Guh. Am I ill? I wonder what it is now. ;A;
Anyway, I managed to really trully unintentionally piss off someone today. To that person, ;A; I'm really sorry, I didn't mean for that misunderstanding to happen. But but! Let me apologize to you in person on Thursday properly, okay? ;A;
Aaaah, feeling guilty has made me even more lethargic. I feel like I'm drowning in the slow haze that Musashi keeps talking about. Musashi... how did you get that haze thing off again? ;A;
... Wait, was it even Musashi? ;A;
Memory is so bad, hearing is even worse. But my stamina! It's completely gone! ;A; And I know I might sound like I have so much time for fandom stuff, but but but! I haven't been able to keep myself awake for even just a little bit more than three hours after getting home. So.. sooo... sleeeeepy... .........
!!
Ah ah right. The reason I wanted to post... aaah, what was it again? o.o I forgot, somehow. But no matter, I think I'll just talk about something random, like graduation plans... So so so! I know I haven't posted anything here, but I posted something over at the ex-Barry blog at wordpress. PASSED THE LAE, YAY! :3 Also also! I also got high enough NMAT scores to qualify for application to UP MED! YAY YAY! X3 Excuse me while I try to dance in mind 'cause I'm physically unable. :3
Okay, mind-dancing over. So where was I... oh yeah, LAE and MED. Since I got to take the LAE first, I'm going to talk about that one first.
The UP Law Aptitude exam comes once a year, usually on the third Sunday of November. This year, the fateful date fell on November 21, 2010, and I was somehow given a very lucky (imho) 1pm timeslot. But before I get to the rantings about the exam proper and whatnot, lemme just give a short account of how the months prior to the LAE was for me.
They were, funnily easy enough to say, quite uneventful in the LAE-sense of it. :} Haha, seriously, I don't want to sound like such a douche, but I wasn't able to find time to study or review for the LAE at all. I wasn't able to... because I had no motivation to do so. In my heart, I wanted to force myself, I really did, and I even still have the reviewer I purchased from White Elephant Review Center to prove my good intentions. But somehow, everytime I saw the said reviewer, my motivation - not just part, but all of it - would just simply kill itself by jumping out our attic window into a magically-appearing vat of hot molten lava outside our house. :{
As such, I started unconsciously avoiding reviewing at all costs. I tried bringing the reviewer with me to class, but somehow, it just ended up at a holder for my class cards and pieces of yellow paper. I tried putting it in the desk next to me when I work on my computer (since I spend almost all my time there, anyway), but it just ended up getting buried under all the other junk I had lying around. I even tried reading it once when I was stuck in the toilet (oh hello thurr, constipation, is it that time of the week already?), but it just ended up... well, no, it didn't end up as toilet paper, but I ended up just fanning my self with it instead of reading it. I could glance at the pages, sure, but to actually read them and... REVIEW? O.O
---> lazee azz gurl iz lazee azz
Anyway, so I tried. I wasn't able to accomplish any reviewing, granted, but I tried. That.. counted for something right? That was how I kept rationalizing things in my head, even as the exam date drew closer and closer. Around me, I could see other examinees preparing for the exam, some cool, some not. Somehow, everyone was getting excited and doing preparations and whatnot, and it seemed to me that I was just the only one who... really didn't care at all. Or, you know, cared just that tiny bit, but wasn't really worried about things. It wasn't that I was being an overconfident ass, it was just that ever since my high school days, I had never been nervous about taking exams, big, small, life-changing or not. High school taught a lot of valuable life lessons, and one of them was that exams (the original word was trials, but whatever works, right) can only go two ways: Pass or Fail, Win or Lose. Either way, I'll still be alive when it's over and done, and if I were good enough to pass, then yay for me. But if I weren't, then I shouldn't beat myself over it too much and just move on. To other things. Bigger things. To other exams. Life's just like that. You win some, you lose a lot, but you make do with what you have.
Haha, when I say things like that, my mom would always tell me that I would make a really good and a really bad gambler. I'd be the type of gambler to steadily increase my winnings by betting on small but sure plays and look like a really smart player, but would then surprise everyone by betting it all on that one small chance of a one-hit-big-hit win. And what would be really surprising after is that win or lose, I'd still be laughing about it, since the fun is in the playing anyway. (But of course, I'd be even happier if I do win, cause you know, no one dislikes winning.)
Going back~! So yeah, I didn't review. At all. I only even barely remembered to bring the essentials to the exam date - test permit, ID, pencils, etc. (which actually reminds me, I used the wrong type of pencil, haha! Idek if that's lucky or what, since they were really strict with the other examinees, even going as far as to lending them the "correct" pencil to use.) But I was calm, extremely calm, and I was even more worried about what time I was going to get home, since my mom had been worried prior. I even wanted to drink coffee just to get that jittery, excitable feeling in my gut.
The others... they were a bit uneasy. I could tell - maybe it was because they too had not had time to review as much as they wanted? And I'm not just talking about the other two examinees with me that afternoon; it seemed like everyone there had that uneasy, nervous aura surrounding them. I felt alienated. I wanted to feel the "kaba" factor too.
But then, the proctors started making people enter the exam rooms, and about 30 minutes later, they started giving directions, etc. If you're able to read this, then you've probably already taken at least one exam like this in your lifetime. You know the drill: they hand out those answer sheets with the circles in them that you have to "completely" block out with your "number 1 mongol pencil" (I had a number 2). No going back or going ahead to other test areas that you are not supposed to be answering at the given time. Penalty will be given to violators (which I didn't get. I totally went ahead of everyone else and had turned to doodling on the scratch paper when I realized that I had finished the entire exam a good 30 minutes before it was supposed to end).
I guess by now, I really do sound like a douche. But I've really always just had an easy time taking tests like this, multiple choice and reading comprehension. Verbal reasoning. I also used to like Abstract Reasoning, since it was fun playing with the shapes, but it was during that LAE that I supposed I finally met my match. Just for the Abstract parts though. Gave me a headache.
The thing is, I just answer things. It's what I've always done, and it's what has always worked for me. With time-pressured exams like this, you can't really afford to stay at a number for more than 10 seconds. Maybe 15 tops. Regardless of the actual time limit provided, you should never spend more than that, since it would end up eating all of your time, and you wouldn't get to finish anything. I've found that answering as quickly as you can from the top of your head works quite magnificently, since if its the first answer that comes to your head, surely it must be right (or there must be a good enough reason why that was the thing you thought of). If you don't get an answer when you first read the question, trying to dig into your memory bank will do nothing for you. It just means that you really don't know the answer, and are better off guessing. Overthinking things would just overheat your brain. You can overthink things later, when you've finished answering everything and still have time to review. Or you know, if you're anything like me, doodle instead of review. Sometimes. Most of the time. XD (But of course, just answering things does not apply to abstract-related questions. And ones that involve computing. o.o)
Oh yeah, where was I? Oh right right, multiple choices. That tip of the tongue thing? Just an excuse when it's multiple choice. I mean, it's already multiple choice - meaning you get to see the right answer right there in your paper. If you really know it, and it's just at the tip of your tongue, then you should be aptly reminded BY THE WORD ITSELF RIGHT THERE ON YOUR PAPER. XDD I find people using this excuse for multiple choice exams really funny.
The thing is, multiple choice exams are designed to be easy. I mean, really, content-wise, the LAE was really un-LAE-ish. There weren't much, if any, law-specific questions, even law-related for that matter. The LAE really felt like a rehash of the UPCAT, just less science and more abstract-filled, perhaps. And just as I found with the UPCAT, I found that the LAE was more about how you successfully perform (answer exams) under all that [rather quite imaginary] pressure.
Well actually, the LAE should not be about content. Taking from the title Law APTITUDE Exam, the LAE is really just a test to see if a person has the capabilities to study law in UP. It doesn't really mean anything, it's just a way for UP to see which of the examinees are "best fit" to study in the university. Not passing the LAE only means that the person is not fit to study law in UP. Take that however you wish.
So yeah, I had a relatively easy time (dare I say great? It was actually quite boring) answering the exam. I'm not saying that I got a hundred percent, of course not. I don't have that kind of magical prowess. What I'm saying is that I didn't have a hard time during the exam. I made quite a lot of mistakes, for sure, and I can even still remember some of them. But I didn't give myself an aneurysm thinking about them. Stuff happen. This is just one of them.
Not a lot was different with the NMAT. Again, NMAT = National Medical Achievement Test. Note the lack of APTITUDE in there. But of course there was an aptitude exam (which was the one we took in the morning). The NMAT actually comprises of two parts, the Aptitude exams and the Achievement exams (not the exact terms they call them, but whatever works). The aptitude exams test you for your capability of learning medicine in the Philippines (which means all medical schools in the country, I think), and the achievement exams (given in the afternoon) are there to see how much you know (really content-wise this time) about the necessary subject areas supposed to be taken before getting into medical school.
I'm just going to skip over the aptitude exam, because it was just like the LAE, perhaps even easier. I spent more than half the alloted time drawing in the scratch papers given to us. Oh, and practicing my long division, since I kinda got the feeling that I would be needing that for the afternoon exams. (I really did this, I really did long division to pass the time. It was... nostalgic. Haha, I kinda did this in high school back in the day to pass the time during boring subjects when I couldn't fall asleep. This is the first time I've ever disclosed this. EVER.)
Anyway, I decided against getting lunch - since we were only given one hour to eat, and there were (I'm tempted to say literally) an gazillion of people there. I just didn't bother, since I wasn't hungry anyway, and the only person I knew there had gone back to her dorm to eat. Buuu. He building was closer to the exit, so she had gotten out first and had thought that I was already eating.
So during lunch I tried reading my notes from high school, trying to see if I could recall things from way back then. To my surprise, I was able to recall some slivers of the lectures and quizzes, but nothing really useful. Truthfully, I really wasn't expecting those things to be useful at all; I just thought that it would be funny to see how people would react to seeing me reading this 200-leaf notebook out in the open. Must have been quite "nakakakaba", haha! (Bully mode oh yeah.) But yeah, I started reading my notebook just to pass the time again, since I had to wait until lunch was officially over to get back to the room.
And when it was, it was finally time then for the second part of the NMAT. I didn't really know what it was that I was expecting to see, but it certainly wasn't as.. dull as what I did see. It was... just that, an exam, just like all the other exams I'd taken before. Content-intensive, certainly, but again, it didn't really incite any panic or excitement in me. It was still just as exam for me, and I still took it with the same emotions I had when I took the LAE.
I guess, when it all comes down to it, the NMAT is too a multiple choice type of exam - meaning you really just have to see the question once and the choices once to answer aptly. If you really know that answer (or if you think you do), you'd see it immediately. If you really have no idea, then nothing will come, no matter how hard you screw you eyes shut and grit your teeth and murmur mantras under your breath. There were a lot of questions there that I had no idea what the answers were - some I had already forgotten, many I could swear on my life I had never, ever, eeeeeever, encountered before. But I didn't pressure myself answering since I believed that whatever grades I get, they really are just the grades that I deserve. Nothing more, nothing less.
And I guess I do have the aptitude to get into both law and med, since I, for lack of better term, qualified for application to both of my targets. I have to admit though, that I was happier receiving the news of my NMAT grade, compared to my LAE passing. Maybe it's because of the fact that I'd always dreamed of being a doctor; I'll admit to losing sight of that for quite a long while in high school, but somehow, when I was about to go to college, the feelings of wanting to be like that person, wanting to do good like my childhood hero, all these inspiring things came back to me. I'd never wanted anything in my life as much as to be like him, I'd never had feelings as strong as that. And it saddened me somewhat - no, not somewhat, it saddened to the point of crying and blaming people and hating people when I was told that time when I was applying for the UPCAT that I couldn't put Med as any of my choices since we wouldn't have been able to afford sending me through med school anyway. Even subsidized UP Med at that.
I, at that time, I really wanted to protest. I wanted to scream and shout and just... ask why. Why couldn't I be what I wanted to be? Why couldn't I have the chance to do what I wanted to do, what I could probably do? Why wasn't I allowed to take step to my dream? So many whys. I cried a lot back then, but I told no one. Showed no one. I went through it alone, because even though I could have said something, no one would have been able to do anything anyway. It was game over for that dream. It was simply that.
[And even forcing me to put Nursing down as my first choice, damn it.]
And so I went to OrCom. A little half-heartedly, even up to now. I've always felt like I was wasting my time in OrCom, always felt like I could have gone someplace else. Not because OrCom was just a waste of time, no of course not. OrCom.. was-is comfortable. A safe place. But I just felt that I could have pursued something close to med instead, something related. It really was hard for me to let go of that dream, and I guess that was my main motivation to take the NMAT in the first place. I wanted to see if all this time, I could have been somewhere else; if all this time I really just was wasting time... that if all this time, I could have been been getting closer instead to my dream. That if all this time, I could have been getting closer to him.
That maybe, after all that time, all that wasted time, all that time spent on crying and blaming and torturing myself with the what ifs... maybe after all that, I'd finally get the chance to see if I would have made it to at least half the struggle should I have taken med. I thought the NMAT would give me the answers I wanted. Maybe even give me the direction that I've always missed in my life. That I'm still missing, at the time of this writing.
And so I took it. I took a chance, begged my parents to let me take it, even assured them that they wouldn't have to pay for the exam fees, that I would find a way to produce the money. They gave me the money anyway, after giving me those slightly guilty, slightly worried looks. I know, I get it, to you I might look like I really don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going, but I just wanted to see..
Two weeks after the exam. The results came. My target was to get a score that would at least qualify me for application to UP Med, a whooping 90%. I had a target, yes, but the real answer for me would be the percentile ranking - it was literally for me a question of how high I could go, of how high I could reach. Of how far. Maybe, finally, if I get a score high enough to impress my parents, to convince them I could, then maybe, just maybe...
And to my jubilant surprise, I did. Reach my goal, went over it even, just a little. A 92%. A 92% with barely any reviewing, with just the knowledge in my head. A 92%, with just me. No special professors to credit, just basic high school and NatSci knowledge. That 92%, I can really say that was just me, all me. God, I was so proud of myself, so very proud that even I could reach that high. I know to many UP Med people that number seems too low already, but for me... it means so much to me. More than being qualified for application, more than that, to be able to get a 92. It meant that only 8% of the population of examinees got a higher grade than me. That really really meant a lot. It meant to me that I could go there, to places that would bring me closer to becoming like my hero. To finally doing something worthwhile, for me and for others.
But then of course there was LAE. It was my father's idea to get me to take the exam, since what he really wanted was to take me to Qatar to work there after graduating law. I understand his wanting better things for me, but to be honest, I really wasn't interested in law. And to some degree, even now I sometimes feel like losing interest in it when I think about it. It's just... not what I imagined myself to be all those years before. Sometimes when I think about the prospects, it gets a little better, a little more interesting, but it's never going to be THE dream. It may become A dream, but not the one. It's not just the same.
And you may be wondering why it seems like I've already made up my mind to go to law when there's still a chance for me to go to med afterall. That may be so, that may be how it looks, but in the end, things like money, time and support are really the things that a person needs to have in order to pursue dreams. More than just the will, more than just the guts. It's those seemingly materialistic trivial things that really do make or break dreams. And in those things, I seem to have been really unlucky.
I keep telling myself that knowing the NMAT percentile is enough. Should be enough. But no matter how many times I say that, the only real consolation that I get is that I get to say I quit the fight in my terms. I wasn't booted out of it because I didn't have to capacity for it; I chose not to put my family, my loved ones through the strain of putting me through med school, even though it meant giving up the only thing that I've ever really felt so strongly about. It hurts, but I have to do it, I have to give up, because we really can't afford it. Literally, figuratively. Because of so many, so little, so trivial, so serious reasons. Just reasons. But reasons enough.
I'm crying right now, because I'm both disappointed in myself and relieved. Maybe with time, I'll come to love law. Maybe not as well, but somewhere close to that. Maybe, maybe. All those maybes. Maybe someday, somehow, I'll finally be able to let go of this regret. But not anytime soon. Surely, not anywhere near now.