Academic excellence

In those school days, achievement was very much measured by academic excellence rather than performance in extra-curriculum activities. One has to perform relatively well in examination before he or she could secure a social place in the school. Doing well in examination of course needs not only some intelligence, and I believe hard work, perseverence, patience and discipline do count a lot. In my own opinion, the academic inclination of individual students plays an important role in separating the better performing and below performing students. If students are totally not inclined to studying, no matter how smart they are, they would not be able to do well, therefore this has nothing to do with intelligence. Amongst the better performing students, the difference in intelligence level, I would say is only marginal. Of course there are very few extraordinary and outstanding students that they are just one class above the rest. The point I want to make here is that if you happen to be in the A class, the majority of the students would not differ that much by level of intelligence, differences in scoring are only made possible by hours of hardwork putting in more than the others!

When I entered into University Malaya, a few of the students from other states were just extremely bright and I realized that they were cut to perform well in academic studies. They could score a string of A+ but I had never achieved that level of excellence and until now I still would not know what is the threshold in order to score an A+ in a subject in the engineering faculty. That is the real difference between good students and genius!

Doing well academically does not promise anyone that they will eventually become successful in career or wealthy at the later part of their life. The wealthiest of my coursemates were not the 1st class honor students, most of the rich ones were the 3rd class holders!

Most of the comparison done for academic excellence is based on science stream students that take on courses such as medicine, engineering, dentistry etc, this is especially so in Malaysia. We always forget about the academic excellence for the art stream students. This is because during my time, students did well in government examination were automatically placed into science stream. After so many years, I only realize that I was actually driven on by this wave of so called science subjects excellence mindset! If I were to take on art subjects, I would have performed even much better!

I have never regretted for taking mechanical engineering as it has given me distinct advantages over the years when I assume various capacities in different industries during my career life. But I do believe, I could have been a very outstanding art student!