UPCAT and the Inner Voice

Graduating as an honor student in a public high school, I felt the pressure in passing the college entrance exams and landing a spot in one of our country's premier universities. I took several exams from different universities, all with overwhelming nervousness. My goal back then was to pass at least one so I can pursue my college education. The most nerve-wracking exam I took was the UPCAT (University of the Philippines College Admission Test). 

During high school, our teachers had been promoting UP to all of us (their students), saying it's one of the best universities in the country and that they provide a world-class education. We also had some of our high school alumni (studying in UP at that time) visited our school and said the same things about UP during the career orientation. We became more excited to enter UP and dreamt of becoming one of the "iskolar ng bayan". Knowing how difficult UPCAT was, our teachers hoped that at least a few of us in the graduating class will be successful in passing the exam and study in UP to become successful. I was in the opinion that being successful in college is not dependent on the course or the school, it all depends on the student. I respected my teachers' opinions as I understood that having their students pass UP will definitely make them proud as a teacher and will also make the school proud for honing great students.

After submitting all the requirements, we were given the schedule for our exam. After a few weeks of waiting, the anticipated day has come. I arrived early in the venue and managed to review a little before the exam started. I prayed to God to give me wisdom and strength. While taking the exam, I can still remember how terrified I was. My hands were literally shaking, I couldn't write properly. The whole exam was divided into 4 parts: Language Proficiency, Science, Math and Reading Comprehension, each part had a time limit. Finished or not, you'll have to move on to the next part once the time was up. True enough, it was not a walk in the park. Most of the questions were extremely difficult, some of which were totally new to me. I thought to myself, "What is this? Oh geez, I don't think this was taught to us in school". Despite the overwhelming pressure and nervousness, I followed the instructions and gave my 100% in answering each of the questions. That was the longest 6 hours of my life!

Through God's grace, I managed to finish the exam. While traveling back home, I can't help but recall the questions and assess if my answers were correct. Then there was this inner voice within me who said: "who do you think you are? you are not good enough, you will not pass that exam". Knowing that I wasn't able to answer all the questions and not even sure if all my answers were correct, I listened to that voice and thought that probably it was right, I'm not good enough and I wouldn't pass that exam. I just became comforted by the fact that I'm blessed to have been given the opportunity to take that prestigious exam.

A few days before graduation, we heard that the UPCAT results were out and my classmates excitedly contacted one of our alumnae in UP to check the results for us. By giving their names one by one via text message, I let my classmates check their results first and decided to go last, as I was really nervous and terrified. As the text messages started to arrive, one by one, I saw my classmates jumping for joy (for sure they passed) while some cried really hard for not making it. 

Once everyone was done, the moment of truth came, it was my turn. When my name was sent, we waited for a couple of minutes. The waiting game was paranoiac that my mind became clouded with a lot of things - the positives, the negatives, and the in-betweens. In a way, I was conditioning my mind and physical self to stay calm and accept the result, whatever the result will be. The inner voice in me struck back and said: "I told you, don't expect that you will pass, you will only be disappointed." But that day turned out to be one of the most memorable days of my life! I passed the UPCAT and that was the start of something great! :)

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I'm sharing this story not to brag, but to share the lesson that I've learned from this experience. Sometimes, luck is on our side but our life should not be dependent on pure luck. We should be the captain of our own ships, we should take control of our lives and direct it to where we want it to be. If we want to be successful, we have to have faith and always give our 100% in everything that we do. Yes, there will always be that inner voice within us that will tell us that we're not good enough and we will never make it - please don't let that voice ruin your dreams and aspirations in life. We have to let go of the negative thoughts and train our mind to always think positively, as positive thoughts always attract positive results.

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