And she said that she didn't remember where she had heard this, but..
There was a lady in the Holy Prophet's (Peace Be Upon Him) time who had epilepsy & migraines. She asked the Holy Prophet (P.B.U.H.) to ask God to end her condition. He asked her what she would prefer: go to Heaven directly and keep having migraines & seizures in this life, or be judged for her deeds and never have migraines or seizures again. What would you pick? If, of course, you had migraines or epilepsy and knew what it was like..
I'd take having migraines in his life.. But it still hurts my head and I can't prevent it.
Yes, I pray to God to help me bear them..
And yes, I went to see a doctor. Two, in fact. They didn't help. Period.
Medicine doesn't help either.. And I can't sleep when the migraines are in the back of the head.
Migraines, by the way, are severe headaches which affect any one side of the head.. the front, back, sides, everywhere, or more than one side at a time.. And light and noise makes them worse.
Oh, and medicine doesn't help. Did I say that?
This is what my face is like when I have a migraine and I was in the middle of doing something important:
Yeah, they suck.. but I'm not going to keep on ranting about migraines.
So I was in the middle of applying for scholarships and online jobs when I got the migraine that made me so.. depressed? upset?
Sigh.
Anyway.
If I had known fourteen months ago where I would be and why right now, I would have.. I don't know, started looking at scholarships earlier?
In April last year, I moved to America for immigration. Happy, happy, happy, right?
I had my O'level transcripts evaluated, and I found out that it was equal to graduating from high school in America. Yes, I was delighted that I could go to university a year ahead of all my friends in Pakistan.
And I went to community college there with scholarships. It made life easier for my parents.
Today, 29th May 2011, I'm done with my first year of community college (which is, by the way, the same as a four-year university, just cheaper and you have to transfer to a university in two years). Yay. Now, though, my scholarship at the community college has been halved (no, not because of my grades, I kept those high enough to apply to Harvard, remember?) because of budget cuts.
Since I had known that it was coming, I had applied to universities a year early as a transfer student. Harvard was my number one choice-if your parents made less than $60,000 per year, you didn't have to pay. And I didn't get in-1500 applicants and 12 spaces. I asked them why I didn't get in and where I could improve. Guess what they told me? There was nothing lacking in my application and there was no specific negative reason why I didn't get in.
I wasn't dumb enough to apply to Harvard only. I applied at Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania too. They said no too.. And since they both had over a thousand applicants each, I didn't bother asking them where I could improve.
I applied to Cornell, SMU & Texas A&M too. Still waiting to hear back from them, though.
Then there was this university in California that a friend of mine told me that she was applying to.
I love my family first (always, always, always there for me) and then my friends.. Not that all my friends really care about me. I don't feel sorry for myself, my dad says that friends are only friends until the time that they need you. Which is so true. Like I said two years ago after my best friends stopped talking to me (and I didn't even do anything, they had moved to new schools): Nearly everyone is the same. You help them, then they stab you in the back, lie to you & leave you to rot.
If it wasn't for my family, I wouldn't even be around. And for the fact that suicide is not allowed in Islam. I'd have been gone in.. seventh grade :o
But getting back to the point, yeah, I love my family, and I'd do anything to keep them happy forever, even if it meant not getting what I want, like I want to go to university-it's not even selfish to want to go to university, now, is it?
As for the university my friend applied to.. She didn't get in. But I did.
So, you're probably thinking, yay, problem resolved, you can go to university, right? No.. I can't.. yet. I need to pay to go. And even though they've given me a 50% in need-based grants, I don't have enough-and neither do my parents after the costs of going to America, coming back, and having to buy back all the stuff we sold which is now twice as expensive-so I'm looking at scholarships and online jobs now.
Loans aren't possible.. Because no bank would give $25,000 for me to go to university.
Oh, and it was Santa Clara University which said yes and made my dream of becoming and engineer possible. Now, though.. It's all in God's hands, as it always has been and will be.
Santa Clara, is, by the way, awesome. At least in my own opinion.
I have to stay at a uni in America, too. Because of the immigration thing.
And if I can't transfer to university, then I'm going to try and get a teaching job here and take online classes-the very few that I can take with the amount of financial aid that i'll get at Richland.
I know that there are millions of people who would love to go to university and those who have worse problems than mine. Thing is, I'd happily swap with them. They'd do much better in my place and would be more thankful than I can ever be.
I sound like a thankless person, but I try to be thankful.. But I have to talk to someone to calm down at times like this. Even if I'm talking to myself.
Looks like I'll be teaching in August. That's something I love doing and I've done before, so.. lucky me. =)
