i feel so depressed about studies. just for the simple fact that i'm trying my best but still i cannot improve. i have fallen into a trench too deep to be dug out of, and in 5.5 months time my doomsday arrives. i don't know what's the root cause why i'm not performing, whether is it odac or me being not smart enough or not good enough at managing my life or being too tired from exercising too much. i guess its a combination of all, and ultimately everything is my fault. i never knew when i joined odac last year that my studies would suffer, but also that i would learn so much or grow so much. in one year i grew in areas that i never even practised for 16 years of my life. i had a bad upbringing, bad not in the sense that i was not taught manners, but on a deeper level, where i was not brought up to succeed in life. and in j1 mid year the door to all that i had lacked in childhood opened like a floodgate and overwhelmed me, drowned me. for the first time in life i challenged myself to being better in so many areas that i had never even thought of. areas like being neat in school work, being organised, etc. and that burning desire to do well in so many areas that i suddenly could see i was very lousy in, consumed me. overambition, and the drive to clean up all the mess that had accumulated for 16 years, must have been the reason to my downfall now.

but the worst thing i feel about my life, is just the underlying weakness to everything that i do. i study, and before a few hours are up i'm tired. i exercise a bit more in the morning, and i fall asleep in class. i try to keep neat, and before the week is up i'm forgetting stuff, messing up stuff again. all these, stem from the fact that i had never had practiced these virtues since i was younger, and damn it i am now so restricted by my own weakness. not by my lack of will or the intelligence, but by the hand of tiredness that i fall. no no no i say, i must get stronger, i must pick myself up again, keep fighting, come on. then i realise that's what i've been saying for the past one year.

God just give me the strength.

In church, my faith is shaken. My cell leader's leader's leader, the pastor of the zone, is leaving. My cell leader's leader, the zone supervisor and my good friend, has left. My cell leader himself, might be leaving soon. My best friend in church, my mentor, my role model leave? This cannot be... And for the past few months there have been tell tale signs of that. Too much analysis between the both of us of the doctrine of the church, too much questioning and challenging, and doubting of the word of the church, whether does it portray the God we know. The cell group too is falling apart. I laugh cynically sometimes at life, at how it never rains but it pours, why everything in these two years of my life and not before. why the doubt whether all that i have been studying in life, is it really what my mind is set out to do. i could have doubted last time in sec schl, i could have doubted in pri schl, 10 years for me to doubt and no, i had to doubt now when i feel the lowest i ever felt in my life about studies.

i love arts honestly i do. how amazing, asthetics. i look at a beautifully painted picture and i feel the sincere and honest awe of it. i read poems and listen to classical music, and i feel the powerful undercurrent of creative juices, flowing beneath the surface of a suppressed mind, a mind oppressed by the need to study science. i want to draw, i want to paint, i want to compose music, i want to sing. everytime on expeditions, i look across a beautiful landscape painted gold by the setting sun, a vast landscape of beautiful green and tranquility, serenity in the rolling hills and farm animals; i look at it and want to laugh with joy for but the beauty of it, and when i turn to share it with my odac friends, they just look bored or trying to humour me when i share with them, even those that supposedly study arts; i can tell that they honestly do not feel the joy that i do in seeing the beauty of the landscape, and it saddens my heart, it makes me feel apart from them, and from everyone i know. i walk the beautiful forest, i hear the birds and the cicadas, see the canopy of evergreen, feel the life in th e forest all around me, the beautiful tenacity of life, and i know in my heart that only mr lim feels what i feel (and my dad would too, if he had come on the trips). but i cannot converse and share with mr lim as freely as i can my friends, neither do i have enough time to walk the forests every week with my dad, even though i fiercely wish i could, and wish my life with studies is over, and wish that i can just express all of the creative talent that i have.

i feel that as long as i learn the science of drawing well, of how to play an instrument, of how to compose linguistically consistent sentences, i can unleash all of my potential, the potential that i had felt back in lower sec and suppressed because my parents wanted me to work hard and study science, so that i could have a brighter future. how i yearn for life like that.

i feel that i understand things more than so many people do, the politics around the world that i am so interested in, the stock markets, the economy, all these excite my mind in a different way, and also learning about the stars and astronomy and nuclear physics and quantum mechanics, all the science in the world, all appeal so strongly to me. No, i don't want to learn about how to sub some stupid equation into a question, no i don't want to have to memorise pages upon pages of different reactions in different conditions with different reagents, i want to know about the atoms, the minuscule world down there, electrons roving with so much deadly energy and neutrons between the protons and quarks and bosons and anti protons, i want to know the colossal world out there, the planetary bodies, the regions of empty space punctured by the clusters of galaxies, all these clusters clustered within yet larger superclusters, billions upon billions of light years across, enormous beyond belief and imagination; i want to learn of time space, speed of light and the bending of time itself, quantum waves and currents, black holes... so much, so vast the world of science. i don't want to be restricted by my curriculum, by having to memorize and practice so much details of one myopic scope of science. No, there is a world out there, too vast and huge to be comprehended, too much for one to go into details. There is no time, I want to explore every niche of science, i want to know something of everything, but not know everything about everything, because there is just no time. But yet we have to learn everything about something in our school curriculum, how restrictive, how boxed up we are, how out of point studies sometimes is.

i feel that i know so much more than many of my friends do, that so often what i would wish to discourse with friends can never be comprehended by the other party with whom i speak to. for who would understand quantum when they struggle to memorize the reactions of hydrocarbons already, who can appreciate the beautiful view when all they feel is hot and tired, who ever can share how i view the world?

sometimes i feel like vincent van gogh, the artist who died a tragic death, suffering with depression and loneliness for his entire life. there is a melodious tragic song dedicated to him, called 'vincent' by don mcclean, and the lyrics just so well portray his life. and to a very small scale, mine. the world could not fully understand van gogh, did not see the goodness in him. he suffered from illness of his mental health, that plagued him with violent fits and outbursts amongst other problems. but his creativity is unparalleled, amazing, and it led to him painting pictures of timeless beauty that lasts to this very day.

i doubt i can do well for the alevels, i aim average B's, but it is really the time after alevels that i live for now. the time where i can expand upon my potentials, do what i want, learn what i can. i don't particularly enjoy frivolous activities like playing computer games, but i yearn for even those kind of relaxation in these times. 'but be strong, sam,' i say to myself sometimes, and like my best friend in odac once said, if you keep trying your best one day you will get it. i know that one day my studies will pick up again, and soar like an eagle on outstretched wings under warm thermals.