Your A Level Results Will Not Decide Your Life

Yesterday, students opened their envelopes.

Forty-eight years ago, I opened mine.

I was studying at Our Lady of Lourdes English School. For two years, after school, I headed to Toa Payoh library and stayed until closing time. Studying was torture because I hated studying. I could not remember what I read.

All that suffering was for one purpose — for that piece of paper that I believed would decide whether I had a future or not.

On the day the results were released, I walked past the school stairs. My classmate was crying.

My result: 2 As. 3 O. I passed. Not brilliant. Not terrible either.

I applied to a local university. I didn’t get in. The seats went to the cream of the crop. I was at the bottom of the list.

That rejection felt heavier than the results themselves. It felt like a door to the future closing before I even stepped through it.

Soon I was enlisted for National Service.

Because I had no vocation skill, I signed on as a regular in the army. I became one of the instructors for the first batch of recruits in Pulau Tekong.

Life moved on. But the unfinished dream did not disappear.

For ten years, I saved.
I worked in the day and studied at night.

I enrolled in a diploma in Computer Science. I was in the first batch at Temasek Polytechnic in Tampines. Later, I took a degree in Computer Science at Portsmouth University through Informatics.

Eventually, I became a software engineer at DSTA. That career lasted about ten years.

To the students who opened their envelopes yesterday:

At eighteen, I thought that piece of paper would decide my future.

It didn’t.

It only decided my next step.

An envelope can measure grades.
It cannot measure grit.

If a door closes, it does not mean you are locked out of life. It only means you may have to walk further.

Sometimes the longer road builds a stronger person.