Treachery?

Hm, I seemed to have caused a lot of contention after I made my decision to not continue my involvement with the Medical Students' Society of my university. What made my decision more surprising for many was the simple fact that had I stayed, I would have been an complete shoe-in for the post of the President after being involved for 3 years (2 years as the head of education, followed by this year as the secretary-general).

This decision was made in view with knowledge that next year would be a very challenging year for the medical students, as there are welfare issues throughout the whole institution.

Many view my move as similar to an act of treachery, as I was important for the welfare of medical students. My view is that anyone can do it, as long as they have the desire. Our soon-to-be-ex batch leader explained to my classmates that I decided to leave because of a lack of support from my batch-mates. That explains only partially the reason why I decided to leave.

One of the factors is my new involvement in the Wesnoth project. I've always been someone who likes to explore new pastures. After being pushed into the Mac packager position, I was soon picked as one of the forum and server moderators.

Doing Mac packaging work for a project as established as Wesnoth required me to learn new skills, more specifically programming. Packaging work requires me to learn this new field as I will need to fix whatever is wrong/needs to be included in the Mac binaries. Keen to help as much as possible and become more independent from help by others, I have invested effort in learning (by myself) C-plus-plus and objective-C. From my limited self-learning, I have already been able (with the help of others) design and distribute an early version of the MP server for this game, as well as begin some needed fixes to the menu actions specific to the Mac binary.

To continue such work would have been incompatible with my present duties and future duty as MSC President, especially when the workload of the 4th and 5th years of medical studies come in full force. Recently, I have even sacrificed my study time during my revision week to work on the aforementioned server program. During the holidays, I spent so much time learning new things that I actually only had time to play the game itself twice.

Along the process, I have begun to work with people who I can work with, and at the same time, give me motivation to push myself. This is not the same as when I was in the MSC, where there are problems within and from outside. I have found that MSC itself has gone downhill the past couple of years; many projects were cancelled or never tried, and working with the administration (among the worst in the world I have encountered, especially the hostel & campus) has become more and more difficult. Within, the MSC itself seemed to has lost direction/purpose and most of the members seemed unmotivated.

Due to these various factors, the past year in MSC has not been a fun one. I had made a decision initially to take a rest last year, and I should have held on to that decision. I was "forced" by everyone to stay. Not only was I worn down by such work, but the work itself has become less fun. The environment itself has been poor for me to stay, and for me to maintain my own mental health, it is probably best to leave the MSC.

It's easy for those who are not in your position to say "you should sacrifice for the greater good" or "if you're sincere, think of all the rewards you'd get in the Afterlife" and "the students need you". Bullshit. I have been in the MSC for 3 years, and I remember that when I became education head during my first year I stated that I'm entering to work, which I did. At the same time, it has been an avenue to learn new things. During the past 2 years, I have found that my development has actually stagnated. Not only that, I've found that especially in the last year, my own ability to contribute has reduced. If I'm not able to contribute properly, while at the same time not learning anything new, I don't see the point in staying.

And yeah, batch support might have been a factor as well. The medical culture is all about "I don't care" and "you should do the work for us". However, frankly, consciously I never put "batch support" as something to consider whether to leave/stay. This is because I never really "cared" about them; I only cared about people who wanted to "care".

University life is when you should pursue as many things as possible; after that it becomes next to impossible to explore new things in life. I hit a point with debating and I quit that. I've now hit a point with student politics and I'm going to quit that. What's important is that I assimilate the most important skills & lessons from those experiences and assimilate them into my life. Those who think that I should be miserable on behalf of everyone are the ones who are truly selfish and not me. And don't think that I'm running away from challenges; the new challenge I'm pursuing is probably harder than being the president of MSC (due to my inexperience and lack of knowledge), but I'm motivated to contribute where results can be seen.