Listen first. Say little.

I nearly quit college over one thing I never checked.

By Farhan Terubos · 26 September 2026 · 4 min read · Issue #4

The results came out, and I couldn’t bring myself to look at them.

When I finally did, the number was under 3.0. That was my first semester at matriculation college, straight after SPM. And there was only one semester left.

It felt like the end of the world. I wanted to leave, go somewhere else and start again from zero.

The worst part was that the mistake was mine, and it was a simple one.

I had walked into that college assuming it worked like secondary school. A test every month. A big exam in the middle of the year. Another big exam at the end. Twelve months, I thought. Plenty of time to find my feet.

I never checked.

It was a semester system, like every other college and university. By the time I understood that, my first semester was already over, and the result was already on paper.

So I tried to undo it.

I called a teacher at my old school and asked about going back to do STPM instead. It was too late for that. They weren’t taking students in anymore, and the stream I was in, life science, wasn’t an option there anyway.

With nowhere else to go, I went to the college administration. They sent me to the counselling unit.

There was a lecturer there. I sat down and told him everything, from A to Z.

He hardly said a word.

He listened. He nodded. He let me go on, and on, until I had nothing left to say.

Looking back, that was already doing something. Every minute he let me talk, a little of the pressure came off. He was teaching me what real listening looks like, and I didn’t even know it was a lesson.

Only then did he speak. A little advice about carrying on with my studies. A few words to lift me up and keep me going.

When I got up to leave, I shook his hand, the way you do with an older person and a teacher.

He pulled me into a hug.

My parents were far away. I would have had to go home to see them. In that place, the only people I had were my friends and my lecturers. And here was one of them, telling me without a single word that someone there still cared what happened to me.

I walked out of that room calmer than I walked in.

Then it happened a second time.

A classmate noticed I wasn’t myself. I have always been a quiet one, so for someone to see that I had gone even quieter, it must have shown on my face. He came to my hostel room.

We were the same age, but he was ahead of me in the ways that mattered right then. He had come from a fully residential school, and he understood feelings, his own and other people’s, far better than I did.

I told him what had happened. He listened, the whole thing. Then he hugged me, patted my back, and told me to keep going.

Two people. The same thing, twice.

Neither of them fixed my results. Neither of them lectured me about checking how the college worked. Neither of them gave me a plan. They listened first, said very little, and made sure I knew somebody cared.

I stayed.

I finished my final semester, and I officially completed my studies there, all the way to the end.

Here is the part that surprises me now, all these years later.

I can’t remember a single line that lecturer said to me. Not one. What I remember is how warm he was. I remember the hug at the door.

I don’t remember what he said. I remember that he listened.

It’s easy to think that helping someone means finding the right words. The clever advice. The plan. But the people who helped me most gave me their ears first, and their words last.

I lost touch with both of them a long time ago.

I still pray for them. That Allah protects them and forgives their mistakes. That He blesses their rezeki and gives them families full of sakinah, mawaddah and rahmah. That if they carry any debt, He clears it, and that He gives them peace.

The results I couldn’t look at are long gone.

The two people who looked at me instead, I will never forget.

That’s all for this week.
See you next Saturday.

Cheers,
Farhan