i am the way i am because my counselling teacher gossiped about me in high school....
After my parents' divorce (every US app essay's first few sentences ever...), I followed my mom to her hometown in Kelantan. The move happened so abruptly that it took me a month to even start at my new school. I still remember the day everything changed. It was the first time my mom had ever picked me up from school. She came with my uncle. I did not think much of it at the time. Later that night, we left Kuala Lumpur and drove to Kelantan. All I had with me was my school bag, which I still use to this day. I was still wearing my school uniform. I never got to say goodbye to my friends. As an orang luar (that is the exact word they use to describe people like me, who would have thought they really mastered the concept of immigration), I struggled at my new school. It did not help that Bahasa Kelantan is almost incomprehensible if you did not grow up speaking it. Imagine spending your whole life speaking standard Bahasa Melayu, only to be dropped into a boarding school where ev...
