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Now you wonder, why dilemma? It's actually simple. My whole experience being a boarding school student was built on my dilemmas. I wouldn't say that this is a sure thing for ALL of us who had been "lucky" enough to experience residing and going to school at the same place for a small part of their lives. However, I dare say, that for most of us, whether we realize it or not, was dragged to the helm of deciding throughout this whole experience.

DILEMMA # 01: To go or not to go?

The primary, most crucial part of the whole experience. Those who picked the "road less travelled," you are bound to embark on an inexplicable jouney with your future filled with ambiguity, to put it in the most flowery manner possible. It wasn't actually that ambigous, you go to boarding school, get good education, take part in this privileged society's regional or national or selected students' level competitions, fill up your resume to the brim with the most extravagant awards anyone could possibly imagine, get prepped up for scholarship interviews, get damned perfect SPM grades at the end of it and get on with your skilfully-planned sucessful life. What a fantabulous idea, you had at the start of life as a boarding school student. Or at least, your parents had for you. Never once did I not see this fact plastered all over the parents' faces on registration day for new students back then. Yep, it's inevitable- it's what every single one of us, boarding school students had in mind when we passed Dilemma # 01 and chose to go through life on this path. There is, really, nothing wrong with it. Yeah, they all, in one way or another came true for most of us. The grades. The certificates. The glory. All of 'em. But the the REAL deal behind it all, only we can explain. And this has NOTHING to do with grades and achievements and at the same time, have EVERYTHING to do with them.

DILEMMA # 02: To Be or Not to Be?

Practically the entire part of our teenage lives is spent in our boarding school. This no one can deny. A boring but true statement: The teenage years is a period of self-discovery and establishing one's personality and behaviour according to what one thinks one wants to be at the moment, which can be highly influenced by peers and surroundings. Well, try "discovering yourself" in a boarding school. Equipped with the most unlike-home, government facilities (only for this aspect, students of posh private boarding schools are not taken into account- well there aren't that many in Malaysia anyways, boarding school students here are in general subjected to the infrastructure mentioned above), a peer-and-teacher-only surrounding consisting of VAST characters from a multitude of backgrounds (kampung kids, bangsar kids, east-coast kids), usually FAR AWAY from the comfort of home, mommy, daddy, the ASTRO cable and weekend movie trips, "discovering yourself" is nothing short of a mind-boggling, heart-breaking, stress-ladden, life-changing process. To put this in really simple words: IT WAS DAMN TOUGH!

Yet, many survived, alive and not-surprisingly changed for the better. How come? The question once again arises. There was the dilemma. Every boarding school student goes through this. The general summary:

Form 1 and 2: I'm the cute, naive freshman. So umm, do I wanna add that cute senior at Friendster, or should I just call him straight? Do I want to go back every weekend and grab the most-frequent-PB-kid title (PB = pulang bermalam = go back home for the weekend, also referred to as BB, balik bermalam) or should I just fly (escape from the school territory illegally, sans the warden's permission) and add the glam to my most-popular-form-2 title? Or should I become this bookworm and get close to the kakak senior setiausaha pengawas- so I might score a place in the High Prefectorial Council with the recommendation of the Cikgu Disiplin?

Form 3: I'm 15 and loving it. Juniors are to be bullied, seniors are to be irritated. What's the deal with SPM anyway? We've got PMR at the end of the year and we're not getting worked about it at all! Well, not until August at least. So, do I still go back every week and go on dates with Mamat/ Minah from 3 Bakti? Oh btw, crushing on senior guys are so over! They're so unreachable. Or taken. Oh and should I tryout for district level Handball? I've only got spots in the basketball, tennis, hockey and netball teams. Hey I need the certs to fill up my 2nd file ok? X has 3 files and no one's complaining! Except her best friend of course- they gaduh last weekend, I heard.

Form 4 and 5: Juniors die! Not literally of course, or I'll be heading straight to the principal's office to see your Datin mom. All I wanted was help. I was tired from the gotong royong, so what's wrong with asking for help to get mere teh ais, kurang manis and a nasi goreng dengan telur goreng letak sambal sikit je, tak mau banyak-banyak sangat. My dilemma: Do I stick to my juvenile self? - It's been great. Besides, it's not like I was the only one caught skipping prep (short for preparation time, a compulsory study period that fills practically every other time we don't eat, pray, play sports or sleep) and "lighting-up" behind the tangki air. Or do I actually start thinking about SPM? Oh crap, the juniors are super noisy! I'm tired of shhhh-ing. I'll just go to the next dorm and talk about this Akademi Fantasia mag I bought.

It happened to ALL of us, whether we realizeit or not. We spent our time deciding who we are, changing cliques, changing personalites, changing our goals in the effort of looking for "the REAL me." We judge people (oh yes, gossipping- even for the guys, more than the girls- and maggi remains as the No.1 favourite pastime of boarding school students), we invent terms and slang lingo (which, many, are perpetual amongst multiple boarding schools) and we strive to make ourselves and the people we choose to get close to the best spot in the social hierarchy (society is basically the just the student body, but back then, it was the world.)

DILEMMA # 03: To miss or not to miss?

Guys cry too, you know. At least guys who leave boarding schools after 5 wonderful (the very adjective utilized at the end of one's boarding school stint) years. Fact number whatever (who's counting?): The boarding school population generally spends the entire final Form 5 year telling themselves they're more than anxious to end life as a boarding school student. To add to the burning desire is the stress caused by preparations for the SPMs. To achieve our goals in the grades department, the teachers are more than driven to feed us (especially after the last meeting with the headmaster) with past-year questions and sample papers from some elite school who's Biology teacher is one of the SPM examiners. This might make it seem like students who go to boarding school have the grades simply because the teachers spoon-feed them. Nevertheless, these teachers have done everything in their might to help us get the grades. That's their job, and the students' job is (hey who's to deny these days?) to get as many A's as possible, and like the students, a teacher's got to do what a teacher's got to do.

Back to the subject of leaving school: we were really getting tired of it, we really wanted to escape the crazy mountains of practice papers, SPM educational-but-rather-exam-techniques seminars and camps and the fact that we had to forget about going back every weekend like we are so used to during the early years. So when it's all ACTUALLY over, none of us could really absorb the fact that easily. We were finally leaving the place (in my case, a little section within the woods of Rural Selangor) we spent 5 years 'growing-up' in. And really, we did grow up. We learned to deal with the people we hated. We witnessed our progress. We saw how we changed, into what we've changed and what we want to make of ourselves in the future, from that point of time on. The dilemma now is between 5 years of lamenting the very idea of BEING in this place or actually admitting to ourselves that WE SO TRULY AND FULL-HEARTEDLY LOVE OUR VERY OWN BOARDING SCHOOL (the place that homed the most memorable 5 years of our lives). The final dilemma- Do we (honestly) miss good 'ol asrama or do we not?