Budak Kampung

I am grateful to be called up for another scholarship interview last Thursday. This time it's Yayasan Sime Darby. I was emailed and told to come by the Sime Darby Business School in Kiara for the interview on June 2nd. They told me that I have already passed the first stage of the selection and I need to go through the second and the third stage of the selection.

Second stage being the impromptu speech and the third stage being the online assessment. For the impromptu speech, we will be drawn random topics and we are given ten minutes for our presentation. And only then, they'll shortlist us whether we're qualified to go to the third stage or not. The third stage consists of two types of test; numerical analysis and verbal analysis.

Aku dok bertagak jugak, nak pi ka tak pi. Motivation takdak langsung. Aku dok asyik pikiaq, pi all the way to KL, cuma untuk cakap 10 minit. And kalau tak lepas second stage, rasa cam wasted ja. But mama made it clear that she don't mind, that I need to go there and just enjoy myself. So the plan was to go there for a couple of days and and go watch Adam play for Penang in Sukma over there. But something came up and in the end I had to go there alone.

Let's save and skip the stories of the hardship I've been through just to get to the place. Big deal, tempat orang, mana kita nak tau jalan tui dak? There I get to meet all the overly smart student who pwned examination just for fun. Ada yang lepasan matrix, ada lepasan stpm, you hardly find a diploma holder. Ada jugak yang tengah undergone their first year of degree. Pointer takyah tanya la. Semua otai. Met this guy from Uniten with a CGPA of 4.00. Engineering student with 4.00 cgpa? masa tu rasa diri kerdil gila.

Ada 5 batch yang kena panggil untuk second stage. Setiap batch ada 30 orang. So roughly, you have 150 candidates fighting for 22 spots in the program. YSD have an extremely (i quote) rigorous selection process. During the second stage, I drew the topic "Health is the most important thing in life. Share your opinion". I dont know what I did, but I stand there struggling to NOT look like an idiot. I mean, that was actually my initial plan. But my assessor was so cool, in time I gained confidence and my speech got better and better. Alhamdulillah.

And yeah, I managed to get into the next stage as well. Alhamdulillah. From my batch, out of 30 people, only 9 people managed to get into the third stage. 2 orang ja melayu. And then all hell broke loose. The online assessment was a pain in the ass. They give questionnaires that we need to answer in a very short amount of times. 4 soalan dalam masa 3 minit. Lepas 3 minit abes jawab ka tak abes jawab ka, the web browser akan refresh pergi soalan seterusnya. The questions are difficult and you need to use your analytical skill to answer them. In short, they're trying to separate the genius from the non genius.

Kak Martha, the coordinator told us that they'll let us know in one week if we were to go to the final stage. Yes, ada lagi satu stage. The final stage. Sometime next month. So sometime tomorrow or the day after, they'll inform us. I'm not expecting much. I did badly in the online assessment. But to come all this way and rub shoulders with some of the country's best and finest students, is already an honour to me. To me it's already a heck of an achievement. Coming from an unknown college, against students from highly decorated ipts, well im really proud to be an ICT student. :-) till then.