NOT EVERYTHING WHICH APPEARS BAD IS BAD

My former student, Sharveen, was invited to attend the Graduation cum Excellence Award Presentation Ceremony which was held in our school last Saturday.  He was to receive an award for being one of the top students in our school for last year's SPM examination. 
At present he is working at Kamdar while waiting to enter a private college.  Though his results are good but he doesn't seem to be getting any acceptance letters into public colleges or universities.  Sharveen who is very patient and gentle by nature wants to become a teacher but unfortunately, he got rejected.  He applied for a place at a private university, UNISEL and got it but decided not to take up the offer as the course he was offered was only until diploma level.  Besides, the fees for the private University was rather steep.  He did however manage to get a place at Premier College in Ipoh which offers a degree for the course he will be sitting for.  If I am not mistaken, it is Pathology.
What I want to tell Sharveen in this blog (for your information, he is a regular visitor) is that what appears to be bad might not be bad after all.  His teacher, Me, is a good example.  After my Form 5 examinations, I too had good results but due to a slip-up, I did not receive a letter to report for Form 6 whereas all my classmates were accepted.  Mind you, I was in Science 1, the creme of the classes.  I don't know whether it was bad luck or fate but my dad believed that I was not up to mark and never bothered to check with the Education Department.  Instead he sent me for a Secretarial Course at a college. While I was studying there I applied to be a journalist at a newspaper and also to enter Teacher's Training College.  I had gone for a test cum interview to be a journalist at a national daily and at the same time I received an acceptance letter to be trained as a teacher.  My parents were overjoyed, my dad advised me to go into civil service as it said it was a stable job for a lady. He said that I needn't wait for the results for the post of journalist or Secretarial Course results.  He did not like the idea of me being a secretary or a journalist.  Young and impressionable me listened to my dad and went for teacher's training.  Know what?  During orientation week, I got an acceptance letter to become a cub reporter from the daily but I had already signed the contract with the ministry for the training.  Becoming a writer was and still is my life-long ambition.  Sigh!!!  At the same time, I was told that I was the top student for my secretarial course obtaining First Class for all the papers I took.  My lecturers said that if I had sat for the LCCI examinations, there would have been a possibility of me becoming the top student in Malaysia for Secretarial Studies based on my results for the Pitman Examination.  My lecturers at the Teacher's Training College who found out about my results called me a silly girl.  They said that with such results I could have gone on to study to be a Chartered Secretary in the private sector and then the world would be my oyster.  They had initially wanted to transfer me to the Technical Teacher's Training College but then I said it didn't really matter.  My tutor, Mrs Leng kept saying that it was a waste and she said that I was wasting my potential.  She said I looked more like a secretary than a teacher.  Know something, at the end of my three year course at the Teacher's Training College, I became the best academic student and was one of a handful who scored an A for teaching practice.  Mrs Leng who had three years ago told me that I was more suited to be a secretary said to me that she made a mistake and that I was born to be a teacher. 
What I want to tell Sharveen is that God works in wondrous ways.  Sometimes when we are in situations when things don't seem to be working out for us or that we don't seem to get what we want, don't despair because not everything that appears to be bad is bad.  I always believe that if we do things with a sincere heart and put all our effort into it, then the Supreme One above would guide us to the right path.  So a bad thing will become something good.  Though I still harbour thoughts of becoming a writer, I must admit that I love being a teacher and enjoy teaching my students. 
So Sharveen, my prayers and hope is that if you do things with a sincere heart, then things will also turn out fine for you.