It’s that time of year again, school leavers are celebrating their freedom by jittering franticly outside their O-level exam venues, sixth formers are biting their nails before their As, and us university students are…well… only just realizing how much harder the course has become this year.

Sometimes I wish I was still doing my O-levels. Then at other times I thank God that it’s all over. I still remember studying for my chemistry O-level and thinking “it can’t get much harder than this”.

I now look back and laugh-- I couldn’t have been more wrong. As we keep climbing up this ladder of education, the ropes keep getting tougher.

Yet, looking back, I always had to give it my best shot to keep up at every stride.

The challenges that face us are never greater than us, nor are they smaller once we surpass them, they are just right for us to overcome them.

As a college student, I couldn’t imagine myself studying more than I already was. In retrospect, the subjects were a whole lot easier than what I have before me today. But if there’s one thing I’ve learnt in education, it is that with every page you turn, you acquire more skill to absorb the info in front of you. “Anything can be achieved with practice”.

As a medical student I often find myself complaining that I am in the course of nerds. Not because my fellow students are different to any others, but because our course, having a fair deal of content, requires a good amount of dedication and sacrifice to progress from one year to the next.

I always find myself wallowing in self pity around this time, feeling sorry that I brought this on myself. I tend to blame it on my ambition, never taking the easy road and always ready for a challenge. Now is round about the time I realize the vicious cycle I’m in, never content with half measures, yet pitying myself for having to rise up to the challenges I chose to face.

However, in the end I don’t think I could have it any other way. Everybody has a goal in life and as students this is one of ours. In search of that goal we will keep finding it in us to continue practicing and studying, until the day when we can jump about on the back of a dirty old truck and say we’ve finally done it!