Fate played a part.

There was a discussion among my army colleagues in the store. They talked about everything and eventually found themselves comparing their PSLE results.

I overheard them and was surprised that everyone scored more than 210 points for their PSLE and went on the Express Stream. I only managed to score 186 points for my PSLE and went to the Normal Academic Stream.

I am not ashamed of my results. But had I scored better, I would have finished my Secondary School a year earlier and gone on to the Polytechnic. If I had taken this path, things might have been a lot different today. And I would have never met my wonderful friends from the Polytechnic and Secondary School.

Education to me is about learning and not about scoring high marks in tests by preparing oneself by doing past year papers. At the end of the day it’s really not about your education but how one uses his or her education.

Some people I knew in secondary school looked down on my friends and me because they were in express stream and thought of the Normal Academic and Normal technical stream as vastly inferior to them.

Well I can’t change people’s mentality and they are entitled to believe in whatever they want to believe. All I know is I am really proud to be from the Normal Academic stream.

There is a beautiful quote from a Tamil movie, Gentleman, I would like to share that goes something like this. ‘It’s not about how one reaches his destination but it about where he is destined to reach.’