High School

This is a hard post for me since not a lot of people knew about it. Although it happened so long ago, my heart still aches when I think about it. Regardless, I am glad that I got to experience failure, learned from it, and witness God amazing timing and plan for me.

I used to not take school seriously as I sailed through them successfully without having to do much studying. However, things change dramatically when I was in the 2nd grade of high school. In Indo at that time, you got to choose your major as soon as you reached the 2nd grade of high school..whether it is Science (A1), Biology (A2), or Economics (A3). Because my grades were good enough, I became Science major without much consideration, ...solely because I had not thought about what I wanted to become and Science major would give me more opportunities to decide on my university major later on. It's a complicated education system in Indo.

So I started my 2nd grade of high school and learned about Physics, Math, Chemistry, Biology, and so on...and I hated them. It turned out that Physics is my kryptonite. I didn't understand anything about it and I really disliked the subject. I also struggled through Chemistry and Biology. In short, I was hoping to be able to sail through them like before..but instead, I failed and had to repeat 2nd grade of high school.

It was a wake-up call for me. Repeating 2nd grade of high school while all my friends (I knew and grew-up with most of them from kindergarten) are enjoying their senior year...I was heart broken and embarrassed of my failure. Although I had a choice to move to another school and buy report (so I don't need to repeat 2nd grade), my parents decided to let me live with the consequences of my action.

July 1995 is the start of a new semester and I sit in front of the class by myself, repeating 2nd grade as an Economics major (A3), feeling like a stranger because I knew no one in the class. I was heartbroken and about to cry...but I managed to show a huge smile to all my new classmates who looked at me with curious and suspicious eyes. I was determined to start over.

The first 6 months were tough...really tough! Whenever I came back from school, I cried in my room..my cheek hurt from smiling too much and my heart was full of guilt from my failure and from disappointing my parents. I lost my confidence, but I was determined to never fail again. Long story short, I found a group of friends who were wonderful enough to accept me as their new friend; Tascha, Lie Mei, and Imel. I am truly grateful for their friendship!!! Thanks to them, I was able to enjoy the rest of my high school life.

The one-year delay was actually part of God's great plan as it actually allowed me to study in US. I always had this desire to be independent and study abroad, far from my parents (Remember, I had the middle child syndrome at that time). The timing was just too perfect with the pick-up in my parents' business and 'coincidentally' one of my good friend was about to study in US as well. My parents would not be able to support my US school's tuition or allow me to go abroad by myself, had I been graduated 1 year ago.

So off I went to attend Austin Community College in Austin, Texas on August 1996.