ambitiousness

I’ve been recently digging through my old photos for the purpose of doing up a photo montage for the wedding dinner. Leafing through them definitely brought back memories of my geeky secondary school and JC years and of my fun-filled years in hostel.

I still find it strange though, that my closest friends are from my secondary school and hostel years. None of them are from my JC school years. But anyway, that is not the crux of this post.

While sorting through the photos, I came across a box of my old autograph books. Back in the days of the 1980s and 1990s, it was the trend amongst teenagers, especially girls, to pass around autograph books to their classmates so they could jot down contact details and nice words for the owner of the book.

I leafed through the book I had when I was in Sec 4 and came across an entry I thought was strange and um, sounded very serious. Here’s an extract:

“…I personally feel that you should not be so ambitious. It’s okay for a man to be like that but I shiver in fear when I think of a girl/woman who is so ambitious....you have made me wonder what it would be like if a lady were to be elected as President, what would her husband be called? First Man?

Anyway, you have also taught me about the power of women and that it takes a lot of effort for something between 2 people to work. Ambitious people like you have to sacrifice a lot you know. Maybe when you stop bouncing around more, you would comprehend.….”

Needless to say the above was written by a guy whose initials are CKM. I might have brushed off his entry when I was aged 16, I cannot remember. I cannot even remember if he was from my class or from the next class.

I wonder why he wrote those things about me being ambitious. Maybe at that point in time his young male MCP ego couldn’t take it that a female his age was excelling in all aspects of studies way more than him.

And for the life of me, I also cannot fathom why he wrote those last few sentences…

I was competitive when I was young. I did not want to "lose" out to another girl whom I disliked back then. She sometimes smirked at me when she trumped me in class. So I studied hard and gradually excelled in all my subjects (except Chinese lah ;p).

But I wouldn’t call it ambitious. Reading his comments now somehow makes me feel a little riled up and at the same time a little amused.

Riled up cos he was being an MCP even at that young age of 16.

Amused because most people who know me now probably won’t even say I am an ambitious person.