That was the name the BM teacher called me in Form One. She didn't know my name then & I was the only one in class with glasses.
There were 10 classes of Form One that year, Form I A to F, then J to M. I was in Form 1M, the last class.
That was an anomaly that year. The premier secondary school for boys was EC. Every smart kid wants to get in but admission is by location; you get in if you live in the area. I lived far from that & ended up in the not-so-glamorous neighbourhood school, SAB. As we were gathering to register on the 1st day of school at SAB, after much delay & confusion, we were told to report at EC the next day.
Because we were not the original EC batch, we were temporarily allocated to J-M classes and because they couldn't trace my Secondary School entrance test results, I was arbitrarily banished to the bunch-of-losers last class.
Yes, that's me, Specs, starting secondary school right at the bottom of the pit. But there's one consolation, though - from thereon, there's only only one way to go.
Up.
4 comments:
Specs is not so bad a nickname lah. The common one is Four Eyes.
Andrea,
looking back, I think it was endearing....too bad the teacher wasn't great on looks...:P
I faced a somewhat similar situation when I entered Form 1 at SDJ after attending primary school in Spore. It took some time for the application process to go through and it was already late February when my father got the reply to register me at Sekolah Dato Jaafar. On my first day there, the Penyelia Petang asked to see my primary school report card, which I did not bring. Without knowing my academic performance, he placed me in E class, which I later found out was the third from bottom of the whole Form 1. Who am I to complain?
Anyway, despite a tough initial week, I later got along with my classmates, who mostly were surprised why a Spore boy is among their midst. But what I remember most was the mid-term exams. I scored 97% for the Industrial Arts subject, beating even the best students in A class. This prompted the IA teacher to poke fun at the A class students... a guy from E class who's smarter than all of you! Hahaha...
Oldstock,
Believe it or not, I was originally (but mistakenly) assigned to SDJ because my home address was at Jalan Dato Jaafar, which was actually located in Larkin. Subsequently, it was corrected to Sek Aminuddin Baki, near the old RTM.
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