Butterflies in my stomach

It's been three weeks since I received the news that my doctorate proposal is ready for defend..i.e need to present it in front of a panel of ten profs from various disciplines. I'm at wits end and sick to my stomach but life has to go on or else all the hard work of studying, travelling, being away from the family will be useless...AND this is just the beginning of the rest of the journey.

I'm just waiting for the much awaited phone call from my supervisor asking me to go down to KL to present my case. I've been waiting for two weeks and the suspense has almost reached a crescendo. Sometimes I wonder why do I have to put myself through all this ...at my age??? Is it the prestige and the title that I'm looking for? Is it acknowledgement and recognition from colleagues? Or is it validity that hey...she has what it takes from family and friends? But when I reflect on my journey up till now ...I've never been conventional. As a science stream student I was already at a local u doing a science course but decided to fly overseas to do a humanities course (partly daddy's fault too). So adamantly wanted to pursue masters at UM so that I can graduate at DTC like my sister although friends were applying for and receiving Chevening awards to do it in UK (serves me right DTC was burnt down just when I was about to graduate)....basically I like a challenge, something different - different scenario, different experience, different excitement...a different life choice. This reminds me of a poem I love - many of the choices that I've made in my life has been this way (even in my choice of a life partner):

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Rober Frost, 1920