My Failures in Life

Failures are part of me

Failures happen to everyone be it in their personal and professional life. Over the years, the failures I faced personally helped me understand who was I and how I can become better.

My first taste of failure happened after my O Levels. I went to a neighbourhood junior college as I was not the smartest but I only had hardwork. I was told I was being slow and had to drop out. I turned to a three-year pre-university education in the hope of making it to the university matching up to my elder siblings who went on to have successful careers after university education. Even during that period, I had to repeat my A-Levels twice. It was on my third-try attempting the Edexcel A-Levels which is the modular based British A-Levels that I eventually made it to the university based on merit and grades.

Even as I thought my life had been settled making it into 英国莱斯特大学 in the UK to read mechanical engineering, I was at the point of giving up after messing up first semester of my final year. Prof Professor Dame Helen Atkinson DBE, FREng and Prof Simon Gill gave me another opportunity and allowing to take a gap year in the middle of the year. Eventually, I made it to fulfil my Appa's dream of making all his three children as graduates. For him, it was the proudest moment as he knew the struggles, I had been through to make it happen as he had only possessed O Levels but instilled a strong value of education in all three of us.

After my bachelors, I had an opportunity to further my studies in the area of management on master’s programme at Cranfield School of Management . It was a life changing experience that I will never forget as it allowed me to grow as a person. There were numerous times that I have broken down and had anxiety attacks but eventually scored a distinction and eventually awarded a Course Directors Prize. It was only possible with the excellent support of my Professor Michael Dickmann and Pauline Buck .

As I thought, my life was settled. I was rejected by every graduate scheme in the UK and Singapore which impacted me a lot that I used to cry a lot after being rejected. I still persisted and tried out a SME in the construction sector as project engineer but sadly, it did not work out. Then, I went through the WSG Programme for Robotics and Automation with PBA Group .

After which, I landed my first technology role in a start-up called Thrymr Software as a business analyst. Then, covid hit and I was retrenched. I took upskilling myself very seriously. I turned to career coaching with Workforce Singapore as well. It benefitted me a lot. ?I took up a short-term contract role with 亚马逊 . It got short-lived as my contract was not renewed after 8 months. I picked myself again after this failure. I joined YCH Group and had the exciting time in my life working on innovative projects. Thanks to my ex-boss, Ryan Yap for building me up by allowing me to upskill at Supply Chain and Logistics Academy, SCALA through a professional conversion programme. After YCH, I am faced with yet another biggest failure in my life.

The moral of the story is that everyone has failures in life but it is not about giving up as every problem has a solution to it. In my therapist session last week, I was reminded by her to remain positive despite circumstances. At the end of the day, if you take the lives of people such as popular author J K Rowling, Oscar award winning musician AR Rahman and the ever-inspirational late Steve Jobs also had their own fair share of failures in their life before making it big in their life.

I am #vikaraman

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