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Saturday, August 23, 2014

this week was...appalling.

so many things had happened that i don't even know where to start. it was like being overwhelmed just right after a nice holiday. which was a blessing indeed (i mean the holiday). so much had happened, so many uncertainties and decisions to make, it kind of already sapped all the energy i've gained back from the holiday.

there had been some unhappiness that the workplace with a colleague, some disagreements on how to do things and some hostility. but now that it's friday and i look back at the crazy week, i kind of can understand why the colleague was so touchy and unfriendly, and i admit i probably wasn't being understanding either, having my own share of troubles and worries.

you see, in the first place my week was fully packed, had tutorial/work stuff from tue-fri after work. it was only the wkends where they shifted the tue tutorial to the week after. i went to work early on wed for CE and on thu because i have my semi-annual evaluation/assessment on thu. imagine my stress level. i was kind of on the rocks towards the end of the week.

thu i hit my max tolerance. it started shittily with the train break down when i was intending to go early to prepare for my assessment, took a cab with a kb taxi driver. met with sarcasm first thing in the morning when i reached work, faced the hostility of my colleague mentioned above, went out to dispense feeling really shitty and trying to smile for my patients with a huge effort. the waiting time for long queue items was about 50min then, you can imagine the stress level we work at, preparing to be scolded by our patients. i had to be exceptionally nice to them. then one patient was really nice and tried to joke abit with me, she really made me feel 10249352 times better about the day! really appreciated it alot, especially on a day like this. then my assessor had to do my dispensing assessment at the busiest time of the day. imagine how frustrated i felt. got my lunch delayed thanks to the unannounced assessment, and continued horror in the afternoon. i felt frustrated right from the beginning of the assessment, and was so upset by lunch i totally broke down. picked up myself after lunch for another round of craziness in the afternoon. 2 hours into the assessment i really couldn't take it anymore. i could feel my eyes rolling in my head at every single moment, not even having the energy to defend myself and feeling really wei qu. fortunately it got better for the last hour of the assessment. in the end the assessment turned out well, but i was feeling too shitty and tired to even feel that happy about it. i was ranting alot to my friends recently, if you're one of them pls understand, i was really feeling too shitty about things and really needed to let off abit of steam.

today was really TGIF! the pharmacy was less busy and the colleague i wasn't on good terms with was in a better mood (so was i) and we worked better together today. unfortunately i was still feeling ultra drained bcos the night before i still had to prepare for tonight's tutorial and i slept really late even when i was nodding off during the preparation. still, i had a really good time with choonsiang yuyan and puiying today!! and magnum really made my day! really celebrated that this week is over!

another thing why this week was particularly stressful is because we were told a sudden news to consider for residency. technically, they wanted to make us do it but i have a kind boss who told us about it for us to consider. and he said we have to decide preferably asap, like in a day? with the amount of uncertainty, i really don't know what to think about it. there's alot to consider if you really want to consider. anyway, i made up my mind to do it in a day. it was kind of impulsive but when there's too many uncertainties, there's only one way: entrust it to God and decide. so i prayed that night, and i felt that everything was pulling me towards taking it up. yep, probably some of it was my own thinking too, i hope that's what God thinks is best for me.

so all in all, i really felt small these 2 weeks. my trip as recorded in my facebook album, was a pretty eventful one and i really felt God's presence with me and my dependence in Him. This week too, i depended on God more, simply because i didn't have the strength to face it myself. i don't think i would have survived without God.

You are my strength when I am weak, you are the treasure that I seek, you are my all in all.

there are many uncertainties, but my Lord is the Rock of all ages. in all changes there is a constant, God.
Thank you Lord.


+ val-* @ 12:43 AM

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Sunday, August 17, 2014

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/22/dear_graduates_dont_follow_your_dreams_commencement_speech_for_the_mediocre/?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=email

Well, i just wanted to share this article because, simply said, the guy is being practical when he wrote this article. and being a valedictorian, in all honesty i didn't exactly give any advice in my speech.

Simply because i couldn't. I couldn't attribute what i achieved to anything extraordinary i did, or to hold any principles in life that made me better than others. Thinking back, if i wanted to make things cheesy, i would say that it was all God's grace. It really was! i wouldn't have my intelligence, my diligence, my creativity, the trust in me by my professors, my peers, my friends, and all my various achievements, and small things like time management, multitasking, and everything else. i don't know what i did to deserve all this, but like i said, it's been grace, grace that is freely given without rationale or reason.

Now and then, i would think back what changed my life in uni. I used to be a really quiet girl, very shy (omg nobody would believe it now), and not very popular, just known as being nice and studious. In uni, i decided it was the last time i was going to get the chance to do what i want, try things and being allowed to make mistakes, to be the person that would blend into society. I had to shed my shyness, and i observed people who were popular and successful and well-liked, and i had alot of convincing to do -- convincing myself. Change this! Change that! and i thought to myself how everything started. so i joined the freshman orientation camp for pharmacy, and was super enthu in joining alot of projects and expressed my passion for pharmacy and the related things. Such that the president of the next nus pharm society (nusps) committee actually invited me to join her committee as media director. It was a small role, and to be honest im not really that tech savvy. But i took it anyway. It's ur last chance valerie! grab the opportunity! opportunities dont always come ur way. So i did. and i didn't take it just for the portfolio. i wanted to make it a big thing. i wanted to do things differently from my predecessors. Things that weren't working, throw away. think.think.think. ideas were always forming in my head. i kicked start a few projects that i never thought i would be capable of. to be honest i can't really rmb them now, but i was proud of my ideas anyway. and i made things happen. it wasn't all talk.

then came a second chance. the vice president position of the next nusps committee was not filled. to be honest, there was no one to take the president position that yr too but it was too intimidating for me, and i didn't like the job scope. like i said, i don't do it for the portfolio. but the vice president job scope was just right for me, being a supporting role. the only thing was, it involved international liaison which being the shy me am really scared of PR. but there were other things as well. of which i rmbed, i actually made the world diabetes day and another world day a big thing. it was really to raise the awareness of such a disease, and i racked my brains to come up with ideas that worked. i hated boring stuff like booths with boring posters which definitely would not work. had a nice team of people working with me and we came up with pretty bookmarks and floor posters that we stuck all over the faculty to raise the awareness! it was fun! yes. so i did things the unconventional way.

and lastly, it was the pharmville yr. every yr, pharmacy has a health campaign that was pathetically held outside the bench at lt25. i was not satisfied with that. it didnt even fulfill the purpose. so i proposed to have a large scale health campaign outside lt27. it's the entire area where bazaars are usually held. so the big plan started. since it was about raising awareness about pharmacy and health, we need something that could really capture the people's attention. to do that, i constantly asked myself, what would really attract me? boring posters and all are failures for sure. so that led to pharmville. it was a mega huge project that me and weepin pushed for. i wasnt ready to settle with mediocrity. it was to be done with exceptional commitment and with the aim of being the best. of course, that led to many unhappiness during the preparation period and i admit i wasn't the best of leaders, but it was an eye-opening experience, something i never thought i could actually do. and of course, many painful lessons to learn as well. but i did learn them. the memories are still deeply etched in my heart. so i took the good and the bad in its entirety and i patted myself for having the will to do it. i would never imagine myself to do so before uni.

at the same time i juggled my studies and my dance commitments. my parents disapproved of my crazy involvement with pharmacy and dance, thinking that it would affect my studies and health. in any case, i did it with the promise that i would never let my studies be affected. so i kept my promise and studied really hard in the month before exams, setting a timetable of when to study which chapters of which modules etc and stuck strictly by it. that was how i juggled everything. not at the same time, it was pharmacy and dance during the majority of the sem, and studies at the end of the sem when all the pharmacy and dance activities will be suspended temporarily. yes, so i have to thank God for the intelligence and diligence He placed in me again, because without it how can i manage an entire sem's worth of materials in a month?

you must be thinking why i wrote all these down. i hope you got something from my experience. i've been thinking how everything went so smoothly and how i've achieved so much until now. i hope you get the point im driving at. if not, read on.

now it's the point about work.

you see, after the tiring years in uni life, i just wanted to live a quiet life at work, to just earn my keep and live an easy life. i wasn't crazy about money and was comfortable with my current salary. so there was no motivation to do more. i only wanted to do things that i like, which was clinical pharmacy. prereg flew past, although after it i barely survived, it was a humbling experience. and idk what happened, but anyway i ended up in outpatient and not inpatient for the biggest plethora of reasons. what happened to clinical pharmacy? no, i haven't forgotten about it. u see, outpatient also has ambulatory services and it was interesting.

so when i went into outpatient, i was happily dispensing everyday during the honeymoon period after prereg. i was only aiming for the ambulatory clinics, so i was actively expressing my interest for the clinics to the ambulatory head. but somehow i got arrowed by the operations head as well to do some operations stuff. so at the beginning i straddled between the two. and things were still manageable and pretty slack, so i was alright. to be honest i didn't really want the ops stuff but i didn't have a choice.

so i did it. the thing is, there was something in me that couldn't leave things as it is when i see that something was done mediocre-ly. so i proposed workflow changes, i made changes, i thought about what was wrong and thought about solutions. i guessed that pleased the boss. it's not like i did it to win the favour of the boss but ohwells, if you did ur job well, of course ur boss will like u right?

so more things started coming my way on the ops side. and for the clinics side because i expressed my interest in all, whenever there was an opening in any of the clinics, they would offer it to me. oh yes, i've become more outspoken and more outgoing and daring to speak up for myself. i even try to put in a word or two for my peers but i can't be doing that all the time, just to be realistic. and i believed i didn't get the openings just because i expressed interest solely. of course that would be the initial step and opportunity, but once i got the opportunity to be trained for the clinics, i really put in my effort for them! i attended the tutorials faithfully, did all the assignments that was required of me to fulfill the competencies in a timely manner with quality work to the best i could, because i really want it. you should see the effort some of them put into the clinics. makes me really angry that they get the opportunity too. none from my batch thankfully. anyway, yup, it was the effort and the quality i put in that i got future opportunities.

so have you seen my point? if not, let me summarise:

1) reflect. what do you not like about ur life? i hated my quiet and shy self when i was young, and wasn't content with just being alone and passive.

2) change/act/speak up. you can't just think. actions need to be taken so that you do what you like/want to achieve. i wanted to be more involved in things, so i changed my outlook and i got myself opportunities by joining camps etc. i expressed my passion in pharmacy stuff and i got to join the nusps committee. i wanted clinical pharmacy so i expressed my interest in it so i'd get the opportunities. if you don't say a thing how can ur boss read ur mind and know what you want? i used to be afraid to do all this but i became a little more thick-skinned in the recent yrs i guess.

3) don't be afraid to try. grasp every opportunity. i didn't know a thing about media but i tried anyway. i wasn't good at the operations task (to be honest i hated it) but i did it anyway. you learn new skills and lessons along the way. nothing is too big to try.

4) give everything ur best shot. don't waste the opportunities by doing a lousy job. why would opportunities come ur way again if u don't give a damn about ur current ones, be it that u wanted it or not? like i said, i hated my operations task but i had to do a good job anyway. once people recognize ur abilities, more opportunities come ur way.

yeah, if only i had such sense when i was the valedictorian. it didn't dawn upon me until recently where i was overload with portfolios at my workplace and i had friends who were unhappy because they weren't given anything. and friends who weren't really interested in pharmacy and were unhappy because they weren't given anything and wanting to transfer section. it made me think back where/how everything started in uni and at work. and i realised that was how things happened. both stories were similar, express interest, opportunities, do everything with excellence and get more opportunities. i was just doing what i ought to do. i wasn't doing anything spectacular nor was i trying to suck up to superiors. it was just based on my principles of not being mediocre and giving my best. and i hope this piece of advice im finally giving 2 years after my actual valedictorian speech will help anyone who chanced upon this.

and lastly, i will still have to praise God for all of this and all glory be to Him for all i do. because, i would never have such sense if God didn't place it in me. The source of all blessings and wisdom is the Almighty God.


+ val-* @ 10:25 PM

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