By Quraibah Razak
When Nur Fadhilah Wahid greets you, she beams—a huge, warm smile spreads across her face. It quickly becomes clear that she is a woman who is well disposed.
Nur Fadhilah Wahid recently received her scroll as best Communication student at the 30th IIUM Convocation Ceremony. All the hard work in four years studying for a Bachelor in Human Sciences in IIUM has been paid off. In an an interview with IIUMToday she shared her experience on her success story as an inspiration and motivation for everyone.
Born in Singapore, Fadhilah is the eldest of three siblings and the only daughter in the family. Her father is a factory welder and her mother is a housewife. Fadhilah does not come from a wealthy family but that doesn’t stop her from being what she wants to be.
“I used to think that I can be smart, but I can’t be smarter beyond a certain level because I don’t come from smart family. However, after having listened attentively to Dr. Che Mahzan’s lecture who taught her Thinking Techniques, she started to change her mind that she too could become smarter.
She remembered vividly those exact words of Dr. Che Mahzan, and she quoted: “We tend to limit ourselves by having the wrong thoughts, but actually Allah created us alike, it’s just a matter of whether we want to learn to achieve something better.”
Apart from that, Fadhilah had experienced failure in her life when she got Ds and Es for her A’s level and she didn’t get any offer to pursue her study in local universities.
Fadhilah shared her experience when she received her A’s level result. She said she felt really bad with her result that she ran away from her friends who were successful in their examinations and cried out loud. She knew that she had disappointed her family.
However, she did not give up. She chose to work as a customer service staff in a local bank to gain experience. Within four years, she had worked with a few companies. Just two years before she thought of furthering her studies in IIUM, she had taken Graphic Certificate course in a local school and she did graphic design work for a shipping company as well as a side job.
Fadhilah started studying for her degree at IIUM in 2010 when she realised she needed more than just go to work, get paid and spent money for shopping. She wanted to learn more about Islam. She was eager to know more about what she had been missing when she was occupied with worldly. It was her mother’s dream to see her holding a scroll from IIUM and her decision received the blessing of the family, and that was how she started her life in IIUM.
Fadhilah majored in Communication, specialising in journalism, and minoring in Islamic Revealed Knowledge because apart from learning what she was passionate about, she also did not want to miss out studying more about Islam.
Majoring and minoring is not easy in terms of managing the time as she had to divide her time wisely. She said she always woke up early at 4 a.m to do her reading. That’s the only time she could relax her mind, she added.
As a student, Fadhilah was head of news for IIUM.fm and she said it was a bit challenging for her when her schedule had been mixed up and it bothered her a bit but she managed it wisely. After all, she said, she was enjoying what she was doing.
Fadhilah was good at multitasking. Despite her hectic schedule, she had managed to have her own website and she did it with distinction and became one of the founders of IIUMToday.
She had been writing a lot in her website for motivation, inspiration and a reminder to herself on her goal and intention as well as sharing her life experience.
During the interview, Fadhilah also shared her internship experience in South Africa which came as an offer from her blog reader and it was really an opportunity to gain work experience. Her internship in South Africa was fully sponsored by Schuitema, a business consulting agency. It was three months’ worth of an experience and she said whatever she gained from her experience cannot be replaced with money.
Her words of advice: “Just take whatever chances and opportunities in front of us because life is never easy, and by taking daring step, it actually helps us to develop inner self confidence and maturity.”
“Whatever you do in your life, you have to always hold on innama al-a’mal bi-l-niyyat, actions are but by intentions,” she concluded.