maliemania!: First Semester

Rafiqah. Shamini. Illy. Izzati. Afifah. Sarah. Melissa. Chong. Hamssa. Sehr. Marsya. Sakinah. Rini. Dini. Idzni. Ain. Amirah. Wan. Zahirah. Aqilah. Fatin. Husna. Fairuz. Justien. Faiz. Izzat. Samsyul. Eidlan. Zul. Sin Yee. Hanisa. Shuen. Aida. Zamir. Haikal. Ishma. Chee Wai. Jay Sern. Sanjay. Daniel. Pei Tee. Qian Hua. Johanan. Boey. Munisha. Miss Yan. Magdalen. Sean. Carmen. Ee Yung. Kak Amini. Kak Hanis. Kak Sufi. Kak Nadia. Kak Yu. Kak Farzana. Miss Aisyah. Mr Jaya. Mr Joshua Yap. Dr Yap. Dr Sini. Miss Jane. Miss Angelina. Miss Bavani. Miss Thamil Vaani.

Eleven weeks ago, non of these names would have meant anything to me at all. Now, i can match each name to a face, even though i must admit i've hardly even had a conversation with half of those people within the time spent at Nottingham for my first semester. Nevertheless, i know who they are and their names had stuck in my head for some unknown reason.

But wait, maybe the reason isn't so unknown after all. These people are simply new characters in my life's story. It doesn't matter how minor their role in it is, the fact that they were mentioned and remembered makes them count. Of course, there are plenty of others too but my limited memory isn't vast enough to be able to remember everyone, so i hope those whom i haven't mentioned can forgive me for that.

What i find to be pretty amusing is the fact that every single one of those people(if they remember me, and i don't expect most of them to) know me as Aqilah, and not Kamalia. It's not that i meant to create a new identity with these new people, it's more about me wanting a somewhat 'fresh' start with this new chapter of my life. Being called Kamalia would have made me felt like i had to follow the footsteps of the Me in the past; with all the expectations and familiarity. It took me about 2 weeks to finally get used to be called my middle name, Aqilah. I'm so used to it by now that if a stranger outside of my college life asked me what my name was, i would feel awkward to tell them my name was Kamalia. I never thought that would ever happen, to be honest.

So, what's the difference between Kamalia and Aqilah? Well, apart from the meaning of those names(lol), nothing much, really. I'm still the old me, but because nobody at Notts really knew me(except for Illy, who has seen me before), i felt more at ease to just be myself(or however i choose to show what Aqilah's like). With that, it made me feel more confident to do things. For example, we had to do some public speaking in English once and my classmates were quite impressed with my speech. I really miss showing my abilities when the audience have no expectations(or have low ones).

One reason why i was pleased to be able to show that particular ability was because i couldn't exactly compete with everyone academically. Majority of the kids in my batch were damn smart. A third of them were students sponsored by MARA and spend half their highschool years in MRSM, and half were extremely hardworking Chinese kids. With that being said, after the minor exams we had, i found myself to be extremely average academically compared to everyone else.

It was a little hard for me to accept it at first, because i was not used to being around so many people who were so much more intelligent than i am(because i had 10 classmates in Form 5). But as time passed, i was okay about it and a part of me was glad. It must seem stupid, but i didn't want to set a high bar for myself for my first semester here. I wasn't going to purposely fail my exams or anything, i just wanted to see how well/bad my grades would be if i didn't kill myself trying to get top marks like i did for SPM. We'll see how my results are soon. I do intend on being more serious for the next semester, of course.

So yeah, first semester's over and now i have 2 months of holiday to kill. It's been 3 days and i'm quite bored already. I hope i'll figure out what to fill the time with. In the meantime, here's some pictures from my first ever semester in college. Thank you to everyone who was a part of it.