When I first started, it was difficult to envision the end. Eventually, I did. All I had to do was take it one step at a time, holding the hand of my supervisor.

I studied motivation among the staff at my clinic. The biggest hurdle when conducting any study at a KKM facility is that I need to get approval from the Medical Research and Ethics Committee (MREC). That means having to set up a National Medical Research Register (NMRR) account and doing another set of study protocols based on what I have already written for Chapters 1 to 3 for my Open University Malaysia (OUM) subject. Once the study protocol was written and the relevant early permission was granted from my superior at the workplace and the district health office, I had to submit these documents to NMRR. I had to revise my protocol and my consent forms twice. It was disheartening at first because I was running out of time. I initially wanted to complete my FYP in 2 semesters, but I do not have control over the technical aspects of other things. This became my second hurdle.

I learned to accept that some things are just out of our control. The things I could control at the time were my reading and understanding of the topic through literature reviews. I also tried my best to perfect my chapters. I used a thesaurus a lot because the words I used were, at times, less academic. Even then, everything just comes together. The ethical approval came just in time when I wanted to start my data collection.

The data collection period was exhausting. I had to transcribe on my own. I had to squeeze in the tasks of analysing, transcribing, and reading the data between the times of the early morning, after work, and over the weekend. Writing up the report was an equally exhausting stage as I tried to make sense of what my results were. It got to the point when my sympathetic responses went into overdrive mode. However, the euphoria of being absorbed in the process and fully understanding what I wanted to achieve kept me going. There were certainly some things I initially overlooked, which just underscores how vital it is to have an engaged SV. I’ve had my sights set on this SV ever since my semester studying social psychology. She was one of the first people I considered when we were selecting our SVs, and it turned out to be an excellent decision. You can genuinely feel the positive energy of an exceptional SV radiating from her. A hallmark of a great SV is her ability to guide me through complex topics, even outside her field, ensuring that external readers can easily grasp the concepts.

Towards the deadline, there was a lot of ping-pong going on with our emails but we persevered. I felt a huge relief when I submitted my report to OUM. On the day itself.

Is this the end of my FYP? Technically yes, but remember the NMRR and MREC I mentioned earlier. Now I have to submit a report to them. I hope I can use my OUM report instead of re-doing it with a different format. I will check on it soon.