JYSim for jobless-yokel Sim

Reading Kee Wai’s blog as well as flipping through The Star Online reminds me another year has elapsed since we were the merry group of schoolchildren queuing up to be handed the KDU file containing our flimsy SPM result slip. Things didn’t change at all, I suppose, except that maybe more and more people are getting more and more Aces across the years.
It is as if the value of Aces had deflated these past 10 years. Remember there was this one boy whose Mum and Dad were hawkers and he got 13A1s? That was the huge story back then, maybe less than half a decade ago. Then there was this smarty-looking girl from a private Chinese high school who got 16. Henceforth the amount of subjects taken by ambitious scholars mounted up year after year, as if 16 were not enough, people go for 17 and recently 19. Sometimes you wonder if they can really cope because you almost died studying just one Physics before the exam.
I had approximately an hour to spend after lunch today, so I hopped onto the library’s computer to see how Chung Ling performed this year. Surprisingly (or should I say, as expected) Chung Ling was not on the front page, again. Penang top-scorers were dominated by those from Jit Sin, Free School, St. Xavier’s, and PCGHS. As if the mockery was not enough, The Star showed two CLHS twins holding their results slip, with 9 big words beneath them ‘we did not study really hard for the exams’.
Thinking back, it’s been a while since CLHS hit the front page, whether it be good news or bad. We do not deny that our academic performances are not very consistent over the years. And it’s the male’s nature to not be so concerned over their studies, but I personally think that CLHS is a school with much more to offer than just the latest ‘in-thing’ - ‘rAce for As much Aces As possible’.
Our overall performances are never worse than those schools that produce top-scorers, our percentage of passes is still 100%, and yet why do we never ever have a top scorer who qualifies to go to Putrajaya for the auspicious ceremony?
The answer, I realised just a few hours ago, lies in the way CLHS boys set their priorities and also give themselves sufficient chances to expand their talents into other fields. Take our year for example, we have uncredited top scorers who are good leaders, good speakers, good coordinators, and we have also those not-so-good scorers who excel at many other fields. In short, we have scholars who do not just see their results as their ticket to a better life in future anymore. We produce universal scholars, universal survivors.
This time next year our 2003/2005 graduates would be the one shouting and cheering at the school compound waving their result slips to gazillions of reporters nationwide. While we do not (and might never perhaps) anticipate to hit the front page, let’s just remember that exams are just a negligible fragment in our much more rewarding life and that this carbon-copied slip can never take over the life God destined (of course do not ever take this as an excuse to laze around). Let the CLHS spirit live on - we do not study really hard, we study smart, and we play hard.

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