The letter was extremely comforting, telling me that I was a "talented young mind" and I had "many more world class opportunities" to look forward to. But rejection was rejection, that much was certain. My emotions at that time are easy enough to remember: fear, sadness, anger and finally disappointment. Disappointment. That was something I hadn't felt in a while. Disappointment. It was a testament to how sheltered my life was that disappointment blindsided me like a truck in a blizzard.
After much thought and consideration (Also known as "emoing"), I realised that I, myself had not fundamentally changed, and I would have been the same person on the other side of the letter. Its funny how life is like that. If I hadn't gone into NUS High, I probably would have gone on to another school like ASCI or SJI etc. I would be going on a grad trip with Thomas, Bob and Sasha while gathering with my class at William's place. I could walk down the street past Gerlynn, Stuart, Dylan or everyone else whom I love now with not a glimmer of recognition in my eye. Such a thought scares me. But it scared sense into me.
Columbia wasn't a university or a degree to me. It was a gateway. A gateway to new and better things. A gateway to prestige, acceptance, everything everybody secretly craves but will never admit. Studying with interesting people, access to mindblowing opportunities and living in New York City. That was the dream. To be denied entry is like having your future taken away from you. To have someone say "No, you can't do that anymore." completely arbitrarily. I'm extremely content with my life now, and it doesn't take a multimillion dollar salary to keep this lifestyle. My spending is frugal, I don't indulge in DSLRs or expensive audio equipment or lust over sports cars. Going to the US and roughing the cultural and social change there is actually taking the hard route. So why am I doing it?
As usual, I've written myself into a corner again, ending with a largely rhetorical question. But there's a a sense of "This is the road I've chosen". The Plan makes a cameo here, for those familiar, and general consensus is basically "Money is hard, Motivations are cheap." Which means make your money now, and worry about the meaning of life later. To be expected, hailing from the fertilizer bed of pragmatism Singapore is.
Back to the topic at hand, Columbia can be drawn as a parallel to NUS High. Whether my life will be better getting in or not getting in, I will never know. There may be a man named Chris whom I would have started a billion dollar company with as my roommate at Columbia, or a girl whom I would have married. I will never know them. Like Abed said, by applying to six different schools, I'm creating six different timelines. I guess the lesson from this incoherent post is that take life as it comes. Cliched I know, but there's little you can do about it. No one is intrinsically better than someone else, we all play the cards we're given.
