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i'll never be good enough, will i? no matter how hard i try to be a good student, i'll always be shot down for something that you just find inadequate. too many sources, too few sources, too complex ideas, too simple ideas. repetition, not enough reference back to the thesis statement. too many paragraphs, too few paragraphs. there is never a balance between right and wrong. everything is just wrong.

i'll never be a good enough poet, will i? this isn't singaporean. this isn't relevant to today's context. this isn't today's material. i don't understand. there are always "better" poets. but what is "better"? people who fit the mould of "singaporean poet"? so i must write about "politically correct" ideas, i must write about "singaporean routines" or make some mention of landmarks. did all great poets make references to real life situations? did blake find inspiration in the world of reality? you will never find singapore history if you never come to terms that youth poets will not and must not always write in a model form of what you believe is the "singaporean poem".

so ... i'll never be good enough at anything? i try to be a good artist, my teachers and friends may praise me, but there will always be better. you try to succeed in anything. no. there will always be someone better! you are just a big fish in a small pond, but when thrown in the ocean, you will drown. surely you will. and it will be ridiculous. but what if i'm not a fish? what if i don't want to be a fish, or a whale, or dolphin, or a shark? what if i want to be a bird. then surely it is stupid to put me in a pond or an ocean and watch me drown and expect me to swim beautifully, when in truth i am supposed to be in the sky, where i can watch all the fishes swim below me, be an individual onto myself and fly.

so what if i'm not good enough for your expectations? what if i'm not good enough to be a fish? i'm not a good enough student or a good enough poet for YOU, for society perhaps. but someday i hope someone will look back ... a researcher, a historian, an archive collector and realise that all that time, when society back then (today) was considering me a stupid fish. i was really a bird, a swallow, someone reaching for the moon while everyone was confined to the seas.