This country is developing obsessive compulsive disorder towards the number of As. Guess how many As the best student in SPM got? 19! Well, I would like to say well done to the girl. She deserves it. It's the people's reactions that really bother me. The MP (or whoever) in her area made a big banner (with her face across) to congratulate her, students in her ex-school lined up 2km to welcome her. Is that necessary? Tomorrow the newspapers will be filled with her 'story of success'. Honestly, they are so pathetic!
Every year, all these will be on the news right after public exams results are announced. My question is: why take so many subjects in the first place? The thing is if people are taking so many subjects for the sack of getting the As and making the front page, then something is wrong somewhere. There could be other possibilities: student life is hard - only the very best gets the scholarship.
No matter how you see it, most teenagers are not yet that rational in their thinking, and this applies to the very intelligent ones as well. If I can blame someone for this, I would put the blame on the media for making these top scorers such celebrities. I also blame policy makers in scholarship provisions and universities admissions for there overemphasis on academic results. OK, yes they do take into account co-curriculum, but there is no way, for example my sister YeeLeng who was a national level drama champion and who stayed back everyday in school for various activities (until mummy got so angry with her)with 7As would beat the 19As candidate regardless of her co-co status. Won't you agree? If you ask me, I think if you throw both my sister and the 19As girl into the world, my sister would actually be the one who survives and thrives at the end*.
*But actually this is a bit biased because this sister of mine is a bit more gifted than normal people, so it'll be unfair to compare with normal people - I'll dedicate another entry about her.
OK, enough sourgrapes now. I would like to extent my congratulations to my second sister WanCheng for achieving 12 As in her SPM! Wualawei... Bloody hell that's really amazing! Didn't know she can actually beat me! (Please, no sourgrape again) Hope she is lucky enough to get a scholarship to study medicine. I have come to know a lot people who decided to take up medicine just because they get straight As, but cross my heart I'd say that it's not the case for Cheng. She has a genuine genuine interest and curiousity towards human physiology and would get so excited and fascinated whenever I tell her how things work in our body. Good luck sis!
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4 comments:
if you are an adapter, does that mean you contain a transformer, resistors and diodes?
Very funny Daniel. No, I don't contain a transformer, resistors and diodes. But I'm still capable of electrocuting you if you overload me. Try it if you don't believe me.
it's not an insult. you need all that to step down and rectify a current to be useable by your appliances, and that's what an adapter is for.
also, you don't have a power supply, so you can't electrocute me. i'm several orders of magnitude more afraid of power supplies than adaptors.
however, i would like to dispute your statement that only the very best get scholarships. i know for a fact that this is not true. a lot of idiots get scholarships and a lot of very smart people don't. it's just the inherently flawed malaysian system of scholarship selection.
and who cares about how many As you get. in real life, that shit don't matter, there's a hell of a lot more to life than knowing how to mug and vomit out what you've learn (it's actually very very little, and very basic, what you learn in school).
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