Some Context

I was on cloud nine when I got accepted into SST. I had nearly lost all my hope when I was rejected from all of my preferred choices of schools for the direct admissions exercise for secondary schools. When my PSLE results came out, I was pretty much out of options until I realised that SST was holding a Supplementary Intake Exercise (SIE). I decided to apply, since I had nothing else to lose.

After the interview, to my surprise, I was accepted! Again, it was amazing that I managed to get in. Had I not gotten in, my life might've been much different than it was today.

The beginning

I was doing quite well in Secondary 1. My teacher was asking me to update the date on the whiteboard every day 3 days into the orientation programme, and as a result I had the honour to speak to parents on my experience in the school for that fun week. I was also voted to be the Class Chairperson for that year.

I was also very hardworking, earning good grades for both the Performance Tasks (which are essentially graded groupwork) and for the examinations. This resulted in me getting many A1s, along with topping the class in the science subject.

With the exception of English, I believe I did quite well for Secondary 1, outperforming my expectations. On top of that, since I did quite well for my mother tongue, I was allowed to upgrade the subject to Higher Mother Tongue.

The Gradual Decline

Secondary 2

As I mentioned earlier, I was quite happy that I did very well for Secondary 1. However, it came with a very dangerous consequence: Complacency.

I started thinking that I could just ace examinations without actually studying for them. The distractions that I got from gaming and just socialising in general did not help. Before I knew it, this would end up becoming one of the lowest points of my secondary school journey.

I had also applied to be part of my school's Peer Support Board, but I was rejected. This would've theoretically meant that I should have had more time to study and get good grades, but unfortunately that was not the case.

In the end, my grades did not fare too well, with my report card being filled with B3s and B4s.

Secondary 3

In secondary 3, things also started getting hectic for me. Not only did I have to juggle not having a proper mastery of my secondary 2 topics, Secondary 3 really started accelerating with the number of topics there was to learn, and I also just recently became a Digital Citizenship Leader and an iOS CTO at SST Inc.

This caused my grades to tank further.

In the end, I was forced to attend supplementary lessons from my school to ensure that I could keep up.

The moment of realisation

Secondary 4

It was at about halfway through the June holidays that I had a daunting realisation: If I did not start working on improving my grades now, there was no way that I would be able to recover fast enough for my O Levels, and it was approaching fast.

As such, it was at about this moment that I started working on my grades. I would start staying up until midnight grinding papers, quickly learning where I went wrong and what I could do to fix my mistakes. In no time, I was starting to catch up with my peers in terms on content mastery, and it was noticed by my teachers.

Prelims Results Release

Finally, the prelims results were released, and to my amazement, I did extremely well compared to last time. I got a raw 10 nett 8, with 2 A1s, 2 A2s, 3 B3s and I believe one B4. During my Parent-Teacher meeting, my teachers also acknowledged that I was finally starting to get serious about getting my content right and getting good grades for the O level examinations.

The O-Level examinations

The O level examinations arrived and I gave it every last bit of effort and confidence that I got from brushing up on my content.

When the results came out, I knew that the effort that I had put in to bring my academics back up to par had paid off really well. I got pretty much the same grades that I did in Secondary 1, with a B3 in English and an A1 in every other subject, yielding a raw score of 8 and a nett score of 6. This would be the first and last time that I got a single-digit raw score, and I was very grateful that it was for O levels.

Reflections

It is always better to start late than to never start. I did not have the entire June holidays when I realised that my O levels are at stake. However, because I started then, I was able to pull one of the greatest comebacks in my lifetime in my opinion. Do not wait, because waiting could make you lose the precious time you need to make the changes you need to stay afloat, especially when you are starting from a very low position.

On top of that, you need to believe in yourself. If you do not believe in yourself, who else will? Had I not believed in myself as I was in the process of making the academic comeback, it would not be possible to have the confidence needed to ace the examinations.

Finally, resilience is very important. I remember feeling bad for my Social Studies paper during O levels because I could only barely answer the questions that they gave us. But had I let that get the better of me, it would have caused me to lose out on my maths papers which were the next day, which would've costed me greatly since both Additional Mathematics and Mathematics make up my L1R5 and are the reason I got the score that I have today.

As such, to anyone who is reading this today who needs a comeback, the first thing I would tell you is to start now. I still remember a quote on a bookmark that my primary school teacher gave me a while back:

You do not need to be great to start, but you need to START to be GREAT

— Sairam