10 years later, 18 of e 41 of us met up for dinner + simple celebration of our class chairman's birthday....
auditors/accountants (~10)
doctors (5)
architects (2-3)
bio postgrads(2)
social workers (2)
chemical engineer/facilitator/teaching (1)
dentist (1)
electrical engineer (1)
litigation lawyer (1)
pharmacist (1)
rest mostly in econs/finance/banking/investment-related fields
amazed by e sheer proportion who have ended up in $-related fields (StanChart, Citibank, KPMG, PWC etc) =P to our dismay most of us seem to be working for e dark side, be it in ministries (MTI, MCYS, MOH), stat boards (HPB, HSA, IRAS, NUS, RP, URA etc) or GLCs (Temasek Holdings, SingTel, Jurong Consultants)....hope we will be be successful in infiltrating & changing things for e better ;)
408'95 was a '8-subject' class that had geog as our sole humanities. we may not be teeming with scholars like e other classes, but we enjoyed ourselves & helped one another a lot a lot =) though I still feel that most of e class was kinda mugger-ish (loosen up lah!!), & I know some classmates were aghast (& disgusted?) at how 'blatantly' Fangus & I slept our way through many (many many) lessons while sitting in e front row right behind teacher's desk =P
hope e legendary M Leong will be happy that almost 1/4 of her favourite bio class is in some bio-related field or other. 10 years on, am still remembered as e class bio rep whose duties included 'buying time' for e class to finish copying bio practical reports from one another, selecting e practical reports that seemed to have e correct answers to pass around for classmates to 'refer to' in their copying, finding 41 erythrina flowers & cockroaches for bio practicals, & hunting around e campus for M Leong whenever she forgot to come to class =P
at a time when many schools offered O level bio to only one class per cohort or not at all, almost every girl (out of ~480 per batch) did triple science. there were a few girls who even attempted e triple humanities combination, & many took 9 subjects. e school & principal were wonderful & supportive enough to let almost everyone take any subject they liked, even tying up with a different exam board in order to offer O level computer science. secondary school is too early a time to specialise, when you should still be exploring & dabbling in new stuff across both e arts & sciences, both within & outside e syllabus, in order to discover where your true passion/calling lies...& of course, enjoy bumming & playing & slacking when you can still afford to =)
in 1995, 6 A1s + 2 A2s would place you only in e top 25% of e school, below all e 7-11 straight A1s, whereas in my dad's school you would be setting a new record for academic achievement. these days that same results would place you within e top 40% (grade inflation? or just e power of TYS & teachers' question-spotting skills?)....e competition could be quite a humbling experience for girls who were used to topping their respective primary schools, only to enter this place & realise that they were now just another student....there will always be (many many) someone(s) way far (light years in fact) smarter/brighter/more talented than you are, so no more yah yah papaya =P hopefully this also helped to shut up some of those parents who love to compare results loudly especially during Chinese New Year visits *evil grin*
though it could be quite sad to watch those who 'lost their way' trying so hard to adapt, & resorted to 'unauthorised & uninvited reference to classmates' answers' during class tests & when completing assignments, becoming anorexic (recall classmates taking turns to ensure that one particular girl ate something in front of us at every recess; even if it was e only thing she would eat for e day, at least something better than nothing), suicidal, breaking down etc. & all those tears that I saw in those 4 years, especially when ~2/3 of our batch technically failed English before moderation (yeeaaaahhhh riiigghhttt....I still believe it was strict marking + killer paper, since 90+% of us ended up with A1s in e actual 'O's).
like Fangus says, life shouldn't be taken too seriously =) & I still strongly believe that 'doing nothing' is very important for mental well-being. but again if you have over-KS parents who drive you up e wall....glad that mine were boh chup even with all e '0/50's (no marks for writing name/index no./class/date nor any tong2 qing2 fen1 =P) I chalked up for Chinese mo4 xie3 (buay3 kii1 tik3, xia1 buay3 chuk3) & ting1 xie3 (tia1 boh2). not to mention my inability to figure out graphs or how to plot y=x until e beginning of sec 3 (well I was taught sec 1 Maths by a Music teacher who'd never taught Maths before, & sec 2 Maths by a ballerina who taught gymnastics for PE). or maybe after 6 years of primary school they were just so used to me scoring absolute zeros for Chinese or anything that involved memory-work....when we were introduced to e concept of 'absolute zero' (zero Kelvin/-273'C) in Physics, it was like 'yah I'm very familiar with that number' =P think e sheer amount of failing I 'achieved' taught me a lot alot about how to fail, which has been incredibly useful in science =))
learnt interesting stuff, met interesting people, got interested in lotsa new stuff (Chinese papercutting, Russian literature, javelin, modern China history, world cup rugby, architecture, computers, foreign languages, Thai alphabet etc), learnt to push limits & garner interesting reactions from conservatives - all on top of e silly O level syllabus that has long been consigned to e rubbish heap of my mind....those were 4 wonderful & intellectually-rewarding years in a really liberal & challenging environment =)
[ filed under: thewonderingstraycat + 9_lives_2005 ]
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