The Schooling Years

I had the weirdest combination of O level subjects. I was from neither the art stream, nor the science stream. I was from the chapalang stream. Studying in Sg was restrictive back then, not sure about now. I know in the US, you get to choose the subjects you want to take & you move from class to class. But during my era, we had to belong to a class & we had no choices as to what subjects we were to take. The A & B class were the elites. Additional Maths, pure science. Only difference between the A & B class was the pure science subjects. If I didn't remember wrongly, 1 was pure Physics with pure Chemistry, the other has pure Biology. C class was the tecnical class, all boys only.

I was a slack student in secondary school & didn't have good enough results in sec 2 to get into the pure science classes. So I chose the D class as it was the ONLY class in the express stream that offered biology even if it was combined science. To do Diploma in Nursing, I need to have Biology. The principal thought that our career choices would be severely limited if we did combined Chemistry & Biology. So my class had combined Physics & Biology. I hated Physics & would flunk it with D7. Then I would ace my Biology with an A2 & draw my combined score to a B4 or C5. I hated History but C class was the only class that offered Geography. Again, no choice here. Flunk it like mad, dropped it for O levels. I had to do POA as well & I sucked at it too. But I could only drop 1 subject & at least I'm getting D7s & not F9s for POA. I love to read & write. But to do English Lit was a headache. I don't understand Shakespeare at all. Despite that, I got B4 for Lit, probably thanks ti my writing skills. I can never appreciate "art". Not then, not now.

All in all, not a good student at all. I hated almost every subject I had to do. But what I love, I excel. Even in Poly, I aced the subjects I love the most: midwifery & perioperative nursing. The adults can have good intentions. But if the kid is not interested, you're just pushing them down the path of mediocrity. Let them choose what they're interested in & the grades will take care of themselves. Things were different when I was doing my degree. I was a mature student & I had that competitive streak in me. I wanted to do my best for once in my life. I wanted to earn distinctions for the 1st time in my life. So I did. It helped that the lecturers made the topics interesting.

I sure hope things have changed in Sg now that it's been more than 15 years since I did my O levels. Or many other kids will just suffer the same fate I did.