By Ainun Madihah
Have you ever heard about a success story that is not associated with failure? Surely never, right?
Behind every success story there must be failures. Sometimes what we see in someone’s success is far from what was experienced before the person succeeds.
When asked about failure before success, of course there’s experience and memory that can be told. But how many people will readily take failure story and turn it into success?
This situation had been in Ainun Madihah’s thought. For Ainun, a Communication student, being successful in joining IIUM, a university of her dream, no one had even expected that she would be in this university today. Of course, Allah is the best planner for everything.
Where did the motivation start? The biggest motivation for Ainun is when she saw her moms struggling in her career, at the same time managing her finance to get her dream fulfilled. It was very inspiring to see her mother really working hard on her dreams and had always motivated Ainun and her siblings to succeed in whatever field they want to venture into.
Every single advice of a mother is always meaningful for a child. Failure in achieving something can be a learning inspiration and does not mean it would ruin one’s life forever. One must learn from his/her mistakes or failures.
Enrolling in secondary school, Ainun was forced to write her own dream during one of motivational programmes which she must join as she was being targeted to be top 10 students to score highest result for the Peperiksaan Menengah Rendah (PMR). However, as an introvert, it was a big challenge as she was not sure where she wanted to go for her university education, but the speaker convinced her to have a picture of how the future will be. Alhamdulillah, she had decided to earmark International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) even though she did not mention any specific course she would be interested to pursue.
Heres where the challenges began! It turned out that her PMR result was not good enough. Although shes being the top three excellent students among her batch in her school, she had to struggle for her Islamic certificate (Sijil Menengah Agama or SMA)) during Form 4 as shes in Islamic school, eventually its quite challenging to focus her study for the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM).
œHow can I get into IIUM with this lower grade in exam? Ainun always thought of her result that really made her feel sad and frustrated at getting low marks. Failure after failure had made her think of her future, although she was very passionate about achieving her dream.
Admittedly, theres no shortcut road to success. She started to actively participate in every opportunity that the school provided like joining the Pembimbing Rakan Sebaya (PRS) as assistant head of the organisation and got herself involved in chess matches with other schools although she knew nothing about leadership or never knew how to play chess.
She experienced a lot of obstacles during this time when she had to study and manage her co-curricular activities. She believed by actively participating in the co-curricular programmes she can make her dream come true. However, after getting her SPM result, she was being tested again with something that made her felt down and lost from what she was really dreaming for. She thought that she was already doing her best, but she failed to get straight As in the exam.
Faced with another failure, she felt demotivated. Normally a person having similar results like her would pursue a diploma or technical skills programme. So, Ainun was changing her mind to continue her studies and take the Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia (STPM), and then enrol for a diploma programme after finishing her STPM.
œAinun, you got an offer to join IIUM’s Foundation of Human Sciences,” her friend suddenly told her.
The most awaited moment for all SPM leavers, when the UPU result was announced, and she received an offer to pursue her studies at IIUM. After all her fears, disappointment, and feeling lost and hopeless, the news came like a saviour for Ainun. Bless to The Almighty for every single answer from prayer that He made it a reality. She now felt really motivated and believed that she can achieve her dream if she were to work harder and pray for the best.
Being registered into Human Sciences course was unexpected for Ainun as she never took any science courses other than the basic subjects. So, its quite challenging for her to study and understand all lectures especially those which require critical thinking and problem-solving skills and need to do research. So, “by hook or by crook” she motivated herself to be a fast learner and to know how to seek knowledge so as to perform well in her studies.
She was offered to do Communication which is her third choice. As an introvert with low self-confidence, she needed to push herself hard and face all the obstacles.
To improve her confidence, Ainun started to join volunteerism activities to expand her skills in communication, leadership, teamwork, spiritual and emotional balancing. Throughout the volunteerism programmes, she noticed that to be successful, it is not just about getting knowledge and keeping it to herself, but to share and spread the value of knowledge to other people as well.
Ainun started to challenge herself by capturing photos and videos, and doing editing, creating content for social media, writing articles, and managing media team although she was still a beginner. With that, she learned to analyse, observe, research, and started to improve her skills further.
More often, she would force herself to read news everyday and follow news updates so that she could write well and be a good writer. Among the news sites that she read most of the day is Al-Jazeera, New Straits Times, BBC, Astro Awani and recently, Khaleej Times. Reading news on a more frequent basis gave her the opportunity to widen her perspective and knowledge on current affairs happening around the world.
As a student, four of her articles were published in Kampus Uolls magazine when she was in her second year just before the Sinar Harian (publisher) decided to discontinue the publishing of the magazine. However, she believed that the experience and knowledge gained would be very helpful to further improve her writing skills as she is now specialising in Integrated Media Journalism.
For Ainun, she believed strongly to be a good journalist she must face the challenge and not be afraid of failure. She must be passionate and focus on what she wants to do, and never underestimate her own potential. Her past experience tells her to always be brave and to get out of the comfort zone! ***
(The article is written as part of the individual assignment series for Feature Writing class)