Singapore — Known for posts on relationship problems and the like, popular Facebook page NUSWhispers saw a different kind of post go viral because of the message it sent.
The message in brief: You don’t have to do well in exams to do well in life.
A 35-year-old man wrote on Wednesday (Apr 29) that he was from a top secondary school and junior college.
He went on to tell the tale of a classmate who did better than the rest of them despite having average academic grades.
He wrote that he “grew up around teenagers who prided themselves on their academic performance, on their CCA performance, and believed strongly that they will become highly successful people in the future”.
On the other hand, there was this girl he met who “didn’t have the best grades, and was notorious for skipping CCA”.
She always used to copy his homework and was eventually retained after her first year in junior college.
Later, one day while having coffee at a café, he saw her working there.
“We started chatting about the old days, and I found out she got BCCC/B at A-levels, and did business at SMU.
“It also turns out that she owns the cafe, along with 13 other F&B establishments in Singapore and JB”, he wrote.
“Her share of the profits in 2018? 2.7 million”.
As for his friends who went to Oxbridge and were recipients of scholarships, they now work as civil servants earning S$10,000 to S$15,000 a month.
“We have created a system of flawed meritocracy where children are brought up believing that just because you are the best in school, you’re always going to be best in life”, the man wrote.
“I think we, as a nation, need more humility when we think that the best people in school deserve more praise than any other student. People are good at different things, and school, being able to follow instructions to the hilt, is just one thing”, he added.
The post must have struck a chord with netizens because in less than a day it garnered more than 1,400 likes, over 1,000 shares and 263 comments.