Tuesday, June 19, 2007 at 1:33 AM |  
I'm 25 and still in polytechnic. "What telah happen?" Well, I took a different route.

Went through mandarin speaking kindergarten in Lorong Ah Soo. Primary School education was in Xinghua. In primary 5, I was in the EM1 class even though technically, I was not qualified as my English marks were band 2. Got band 1 for Maths and Malay. There were vacancies in the EM1 class and hence 12 EM2 stream students were pushed to that class, 51A.

Primary 6 was emotionally scarring. I got a class position of 7 out of 12(among the EM2s). I knew I could have done better. I did not understand the meaning of studying back in primary school. Initially I was told I was promoted to 61A. So, everything was prepared for the new year, with my books having 61A written as my class. I think the cut-off position was from 10. The last 3 students were transferred to EM2 classes.

The new year came and I lined up together with people whom I thought were my classmates. Then, I got pulled away by Mrs Chiam who told me that I was in her class 62B.

The sad part was that it was a mistake and I did not speak for myself. Somehow, 61A had an extra student. As I understood, it was orignally planned that the cut-off position was from 7th position. That's where the complication arose. Instead of pulling from behind, 9th position, I was pulled out. I remember 9th position. It was (name removed). I remember 6th position as well, Linda. I wished I had been the 6th position.

Life went on. I became more and more depressed by not achieving my fullest potential and continued to have a difficulty in my social life. I got 238 for my PSLE and did not get my first choice of secondary school. I got into Zhonghua Secondary. Eventually I dropped out in secondary 3 towards term 3. Repeated secondary 3 the following year and dropped out again towards the second term. Repeated secondary 3 again getting 1st in class for the 1st semester. However, I dropped out again in Secondary 4 having only taken some parts of my O level Malay paper.

Then it was rock-bottom.

Got into NS and took private O levels in my second year of NS. It was night classes by ITE. Took 3 papers. Took another 3 paper the following year and combined the scores to get into polytechnic.

While waiting for my results, I took part-time ITE nitec course in Digital Media Design for 6 months. Eventually I got a place in NYP with my first choice course, Digital Media Design. Alhamdulillah. Poly life... that's another story.
Posted by Firdaus

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