Writings on the Wall

As a child and a teenager, I went through numerous tough times like many people. Moving to a country with a totally different culture to the ones that I had known had led me to witness the most difficult times of my life. The only advantage I had in the beginning was probably knowing the language even though later on I found out that, that didn’t matter much because no matter what a part of my will always be a stranger to this beautiful city covered in a blanket of clouds.

And this is not the point.

I was put into a special learning class in my secondary school. It was for kids with learning difficulties. Other than my strange ADHD that leans more towards ADD, I didn’t have any problems; I was there because I wasn’t born in this country. That and everything else around me had put me off school and the environment in general. But my dad had reasons on why we had to stay here and his reasons were too good to go against. As I grew older he always told me to aim high because even if I didn’t reach it, half of it would’ve been more than enough for me. Being so young and naïve, I obviously saw things through my pink glasses, words going through my ears and yet they had no meaning.

When I was around 13 or 14 I watched a movie called “A Beautiful Mind” I’m sure many people know that it’s about the great mathematician John Nash. I ended up reading his autobiography. I’m not sure why but Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) had caught my maybe a little too much. I asked my dad about the institution and I found out that it was one of the best universities in the world.

So I aimed high, higher than I could’ve imagined. I wrote my aim on my small whiteboard just to remind me at all times, like the coordinates of a star. I didn’t get to go to M.I.T. for my undergraduate maybe, but I ended up being a student at one of UK’s top 5 universities. Despite living so many horrid moments personally and academically and almost giving up on everything a few times, remembering what I had written on my wall had never failed to ignite the motivation that had gone out several times.

Now that I’m in my final year of university and still going through some rough patches, I was reminded by the writings on the wall. I had aimed high and I suffered…a lot, but I survived, what’s going to stop me this time?

My dad was right, even though I may have not reached the actual goal itself; I had set my target so high that even landing on where I am now is more than the halfway line.