PRIMARY SCHOOL
About Primary School, I remember my years as a Primary 4 and Primary 6 student the most. This is because that is the time that I had the most caring and driven teachers that I had in my Primary School life.
Primary 4 was the year when I was a terrible bad student, as I succumbed to peer pressure to the bullies in my class, and became a bully myself. I followed them around quite a bit, but still, I tried to not bully people and hurl insults at others when I can. Luckily, I had one of the best teachers I ever had, who was my form teacher Mdm. Mok. She had 40 students to care for, but she managed to care for all 40 students very well.
I was quite the bully and did not interact with others very much other than that, but Mdm. Mok still tried her very best to interact with me, asked me what was going on, and really cared for my character, well-being and attitude towards studying. Over the months that went by, I felt myself regaining the carefree and innocent nature that I had when I was a little boy and I cared less about being a bully and focused more on my schoolwork to make Mdm. Mok proud of me.
In the end, I had improved my grades by quite a lot, and it was mostly thanks to the care and dedication Mdm. Mok had to making me a better student and better person in general. In fact, I think if not for her, I would continue to be a student that few liked, and would have probably flunked out of Secondary Schools without the study ethic that she instilled in me.
Primary 6 was a very different year, and a year that I had a very different-style of teacher. Mr Terry Foo was his name, and he kept cracking jokes in class that would certainly give us a laugh here and then.
I was still quite an insociable student in Primary 6, but I was scoring better grades than ever before, and constantly topped my class. I wasn’t in a fantastic class with fantastic students, but I was still quite happy with myself scoring these grades.
Mr Foo, however, wasn’t. He saw potential in me. Potential to become a much better student. One day after class, he asked to see me to talk to me. I still remember the conversation as if it just happened a few moments ago. “Ervin, you are a good student, I can see that by your grades. But are you sure that you are happy with these grades? The students that you are studying with those that simply do not care about their schoolwork, but you seem to. So, I definitely think that you should not be happy with the grades that you are getting, and you should definitely try harder in your studies.”
Understanding what he meant, I knew that I couldn’t let my form teacher down. I studied as hard as I could, asked whatever I could about questions that I didn’t understand, and I went into the PSLE as prepared and confident as I could. After the exams, I thought that I would do well as the PSLE exams were not difficult and the questions were very doable. So, I thought that I would do well for the PSLE examinations and would make Mr Foo proud.
On the day when the results came out, the fact that I topped the class was quite expected from my point of view. However, that day, I realised that real life was not a fairytale, as I only scored 225 for my PSLE. I was feeling a rollercoaster of emotions at that very moment. Destroyed? Disappointed? All were hitting me at once. Mr Foo consoled me, but I was still dumbfounded and couldn’t believe that I had done this badly in the PSLE. As I was walking to the bus stop to take a bus back home, tears welled in my eyes and trickled down my forehead. I couldn’t stop myself back then. However, I made a silent decision to take exams much more seriously from now on, which would go on to benefit me in my Secondary School life.