Reading Purplayaman's response to the local institution's intake, my heart goes out to him or her ('Top scorers tumble back to earth', May 4). Being a Malay student myself, I had never had the privilege of being discriminated upon. Echoing the sentiment put across by Purplayaman, I worked damn hard to get good results, which then landed me a place in one of our universities. I had the 'privilege' of doing matriculation in another one of our beloved institutions, Mara.

The college I was chucked to was essentially in the backwaters of civilisation, or so it felt to me, being a gal from the city. Trying valiantly to make my parents proud and to fulfill a lifelong ambition of becoming a surgeon, I survived horrendous living conditions, half-cooked food, inept lecturers and facilities that were found much wanting. There I was, together with the creme of Malaysian youth.

Did we feel the privilege? Certainly not. And at the end of it all, we were not given the opportunity to do what we really wanted to do. We were offered such courses as food technology and such... though there is nothing wrong with food technology, but did we deserve it after working so hard? After all, we didn't ask to be assigned to food technology.

I am now studying at the University of Melbourne. Thankfully, I was fortunate enough to come from a middle-class family that is scraping every resource for me to stay here, and I thank them from the very bottom of my heart.

The question is, is it really a privilege to be included in the system? It felt more like a curse to me.

The teaching quality here is nothing like the Malaysian system; the resources, simply put, amazing.

Next year, I will be doing an internship with an Australian company, and they will be paying me what a graduate back home earns.

I haven't even touched on the state of the Malaysian politics... some days I am ashamed to admit that I am Malaysian.

Dear Malaysians, how am I ever going to feel the calling to serve our Motherland?