Finally Leaving School

I am finally graduating this Sat, 080809, one year after the Beijing Olympics, after six toiling years doing my Msc part time in MMU. How did it all started..
Well, in 2002 I graduated from UKM with a Bsc in IT. After that, I took various part time jobs while applying for a Masters course. MMU was just one of the universities that I applied. At that time, after working for about 6 months, I made the decision to go back to home for good to Kuching. Somehow, as planning was underway, the letter from MMU came that I was accepted.

So, considering it a divine intervention that I should stay back, I did and started studying. In between I worked all kinds of part time jobs to support myself, including freelancing web design, data entry, work in an IT retail store, the likes. I didn’t take a full time job thinking that I needed more flexibility and time to actually study. Well, somehow I ended up working part time in my church office, helping out here and there with the design and publications. Well, eventually I ended up working there full time until now, been about 5 years already.

After doing my research and gathering the data, the time came to write the thesis which got really hard. It wasn’t really hard to juggle work and studies and writing the thesis. I nearly gave up so many times. But everytime I met with my supervisors, they manage to revive me and remotivate me.

Last year, just before delivering Josiah, the thesis was finally complete. I did my work completion while I was heavily pregnant. A work completion is a seminar in which I had to present my research and results in front of the dean and other lecturers and defend it. Obviously it was quite scary, especially being bombarded with questions left and right. Nevertheless, I passed that and with a breathe of relief and gratefulness, I submitted it for the examiners and then went for my maternity leave. There were quite a lot of obstacles even when submitting that, the format was wrong, the title was wrong but my supervisor really helped a lot and helped me do the running around.

After Josiah came to the world, my lifestyle pretty much changed TOTALLY. My examiners had returned with the results and it was time for me to do the VIVA, an oral exam in front of the examiners and other lecturers. I had to revise my work, and after delivering a baby, I felt that I also lost a part of my memory. That’s what happened when you spend 2 months not working at home taking care of a screaming baby that eats non stop. So, I really struggled even in this last stage and wondered many times if I would fail and waste the 6 years of craziness. Well, the VIVA was not as bad as I imagined, and the examiner was actually very nice. At the end of that, I passed with minor modifications to the thesis.

The modification part was quite a bit to do as well, and again, I struggled to find time to do it. With much help from my supervisors, I finally manage to bind my thesis. Even the binding part had obstacles. I had to bind 5 books, so having made all the formatting, I had it sent to a printing shop. After all was done, I submitted my bound thesis a day before the deadline. As I placed my book on the counter, the guy who was receiving it looked at it and said, oh you bound it wrongly. My heart really sang as I thought, God, just help me graduate! Then he showed me that I had done it in PVC when I should really had done it in Buckram. Well, I really misread the info online and did not notice the buckram part. Thank God he said he can redo it for me at his friend’s shop for RM65 per book. I was desperate so I couldn’t care how much it cost. I paid him and went off happy and poorer.

So, that was the journey, and I really thank God for carrying my thus far, without whom I could never have made it on my own.