Confessions of a Cat-holic (50)

My new friends were curious to wonder why I would not work on perfecting my grades when I had the time to do so. Why not 10As when I had 8As? Why not work some extra few hours for 48 hours straight if I already spent 10 hours a day in the study room? Why not aiming for 100 when I was just a few points behind? Why not the first when I was the second? Why not marry Li Ka Shing's son if I was considered the prettiest in town? Why not max out every option and get the most profitable outcomes possible? Why not monetize my popularity? Why not sell my friends for benefits? Why not Goldman Sachs when I could get into Lehman? Why not Harvard if accepted by Columbia, and on scholarships too? Why not medicine or law, but business and engineering management in an Ivy League? So on and so forth. Why did I not stretch myself for the maximum and reach for the best within the system if I was already almost there? If others could do it, chances were I could do it too. Why couldn't I myself be that special someone who broke the record and left a legacy? Afterall, we were all humans. If the average Joe could get into Yale, who said I wouldn't have a chance at Harvard? In this age of times, we should all dream big, and wild too to affirm ourselves that we could all do amazing things regardless of our weaknesses and drawbacks. She believed she could so she did, ain't it so?

Honestly, if I had that mentality for a second in my life, I could have died from serious premature strokes. Why not starve yourself to death to look as skinny as a skeleton? Why not have plastic surgery to become Miss Hong Kong? Why not kill your husband's mistress so you can take her spot forever? Why not poison your friends so they would not gossip about you? Why not make your opponents blind so they would rather commit suicide? Why not sleep with your boss to get a promotion? Why not bribe the HR to get a banking job? Why not have one night stands in Lan Kwai Fong and said that the baby was your boyfriend's to lure him into marriage? Why not exchange husbands and partners in a sex marathon party? Why not sell your body in the underground market to earn some extra money for a chanel bag? Why not?

The sky really had no limits, so why not go out of your way to achieve success via whatever means possible? HKU wouldn't look at your moral assessments. Companies didn't care about what you did in soho over the weekend. Who could have a fair say over your work ethics? It was all about objective specs, you know, the quantifiable assessment criteria, like how much revenue you brought to the firm, how many instagram followers you had, which school you went to, how much salary you earned a month, what banding of grades you earned, how many candidates you ruled out along the process, etc. Hong Kong was a super capitalist city anyways. Here in this financial hub, everyone aspired to be rich, and richer. There was no ending to it. So why not beat yourself up to succumb to societal pressures to help advance the world and the city as a whole?

Shouldn't we all make "reach higher and see wider" our sole goal and pursuit in life?

This was my mentality. I would study hard and smart within my limits, then waited patiently to see whatever grades I deserved. I would leave it to God and pray for a good result. If I could get into medicine, I would say yes, thanks for for this amazing offer. If not, then maybe I would try pharmacy or veterinary medicine if I truly liked biology and chemistry. But ironically, I never dreamed of becoming a surgeon. Why should I bend over backwards to obtain a perfect score and then get over qualified for a layman's job? Grades were important, and the single most crucial factor for performance reviews in college applications and sometimes recruitment opportunities but you still needed more than grades to succeed in Hong Kong and especially in America. That was why I chose to further my studies in the states.

So it turned out that my Christian faking show was not completely futile and unrewarding.