freedom to change

just came back from a movie with the dear one. the movie was really good food for thought. it was "Freedom Writers", starring hilary swank.

i won't spoil it by saying what it is and anyway, a synopsis can be found in countless areas. but i will say that it was indeed a good movie to watch, not so much for its plot or acting or cinematography, but simply because it leaves you to think a bit more.

think about how lucky we are to live in a place that is relatively safe; one where we don't have to worry about walking the streets late at night and be afraid of getting gunned down.

think about how we may have taken harmony and peace for granted, and the atroceties and hardships people before us had to tolerate or endure or go through for us to enjoy it today.

think about how lucky we are to have education, and a place to sleep in, and people who care.

lotsa people have said stuff about how elitist Singapore is and how the system works for the elite only. i don't know if i'm considered part of the elite.

i realised these couple of weeks that not many people know i have a degree in communication studies, 2nd upper honours. not many people know what kind of grades is necessary to get into the course either. someone even told me "u mean u need good grades to get in ah?".

yeah...so i HAD pretty alright grades to get me in, but that doesn't mean i didn't work for it as hard as people who were...say, trying to get a diploma or whatever else. and i had my fair share of downs. people think "elites" get the easy way out just coz "they can study" or whatever logic they have. for starts...i don't think i am "elite", but people may think otherwise.

anyway, we are not arguing about whether i am part of the elite or not.

it's about getting dirty and working your way up. i had to work my way up too, ya know.

(ok...it's gonna be a long "life-story-ish" post.)

i wasn't in a very good primary school or high class kindergarten. there were only 4 classes in each level, and that adds up to about 160 students a year. wasn't always the brightest. i remember scoring 100% for chinese in primary one (who doesn't??) because i had to write 2 pages of chinese characters everyday from kindergarten, and 4 pages on weekends. come primary 2, i did badly in maths. i couldn't do fractions and time tables. so i had to memorize all my time tables from 2 to 12 and face the wall memorizing until i could remember.

i did alright then...until primary 4 streaming. by the end of the year, i got streamed to em2...the normal people. problem came when there wasn't enough em1 in my year to start 1 whole class. so 14 of us em2-ers had to combine to the em1 class.

it sucks.

my teacher showed favouritism and thought we em2 were idiots or less capable. during the em1's higher chinese class, the 14 of us had to go to the library for self-study. my morale was damn low and i didn't do well. my mum had to resort to tuition for me and finally, she met the teacher and told her off. i was determined to do well, to beat the em1 people in my class, or be better than them. maybe i couldn't study as well as them, but i knew i had something special for maths. so i worked hard at it.

i scored 97% for my psle prelims.

4 people in my class scored 100%.

i was devastated. but i just tried harder. come PSLE results...i was 1 of the 15 people in my school to get into Special stream...and there were 26 em1 students.

so i went st nicks. yeah...elite school right? right, but i felt so out of place because i never did higher chinese and now i had to. my entire 4 years at st nicks...i didn't do that well. was in sub-science, and there were only 3 sub-science classes out of the 10. how's that for morale?? once again, i got combined into a pure-science class. so everytime it's science, we had to split and go join the sub-science class. i wasn't gonna get look down again, so i made sure i top my sub-science class every test and every exam.

and i did.

but i wasn't doing well in A Maths. i had 5 maths teachers in sec 2 alone, changing 7 times in a year. didn't do well..and it dragged my A Maths down. my mum forced me to go tuition after sec 3 coz i failed my A Maths...got E8. i worked really hard over the holidays and the first few months of sec 4. i HAD to catch up. maths was supposed to be my best subject!!! so i did...and i got an A in my first major sec 4 test.

fast forward to prelims...didn't do too well. got into CJC for first 3 months coz of afiliation. 'O' level results were pretty alright, but instead of moving to a "better" JC, i decided to stay put.

i must say, the 2 years in CJC were probably the hardest, but most fun, enriching, fulfilling and best years of my academic life. i didn't really know what was being conscientious until then. did ok for year 1...but year 2 was different. i had much more activities and was occupied a lot, so my grades did suffer a little. my mum used to say my results are like the stock market, fluctuate a lot. one minute A, next minute D or E or O! hahaha...

the worst was accounts. my accounts teacher even told me to drop the subject coz i did so badly. i once scored 2/25 for a test. oh man! so i had to make up for it. i literally did the 10 year series twice over, asked all my friends things i didn't know and just practiced like mad.

got A in 'a' levels. from FAIL...to A. that was sweet.

so the moral of the story isn't me bragging or telling my life story.

my point is, not everyone sees the difficult periods of life. everybody sees the nice end result, but they don't see the struggles or the tough times (no matter how meaningless it may seem). every little thing affects us, and at the end of the day, we have the freedom to change it around.

so we should embrace this freedom to change!




aiyah...go watch the movie! haha....