Tx, All, for the rather frank revelations. They're eye openers to me as I was never in the same league as some of you. We could never dream of anything more than 8 As in our days. 8 was the max no. of subjects we were allowed to take. (I would have been happier if it were 6..haha.)
And needless to say, my score came nowhere near that..haha. 5 As, not bad, but not good enough to boast about, just bearable enough not to be ashamed of.
But the main thing was...i dun remember being too affected by it all at all. I just happily brushed it aside and dropped into Form 6. I guess taking part in all those sports and photo competitions and fellowships distracted me somewhat. (Later, they would distract me much too much..haha.)
Those were the days when we lived charmed lives, without tuition and without peer comparisons. Education then was a little more holistic, i guess.
And having gone thru it all the thing i guess i could have done with most was...Guidance. There wasn't enough of it.
Had i known what architecture (or architectural education) was all about I wouldn't have been so silly as to plum for double maths in Form Six. Hated it. I would have been happier doing Eng. Literature, Economics, Physics and Art, or Logic or Speech and Drama (if they were available--Drat the Educ system!). Of course i loved the General Paper.
And I might have made a better choice in a school of architecture. Not that Leeds Metro was bad, i hasten to add--it was a good school. But I might have chosen a warmer and more scenic city to spend 6 years in, since i had access to almost any of the 50 schools in the UK. Like, 'all i want is a room somewhere, far away from the cold night air.' Haha!
It was freezing in my basement flat in Leeds..hahaha. We had 2 of the coldest winters in the last 50 years, or something crazy like that. (Icicles hung over my front door, and we went toboganning in the white park.) Somewhere around London would have been perfect. (You get huge discount for theatre tickets with your student card.. Haha)
As you can see, i've drifted far far away from the subject of how many As did u get...haha. That's precisely it. It's not how many As that matters in the end.
So what does matter then?
Well, if i had to put it down to something, i'd say it comes down to making sure that you steer yourself always to the place of the pulse of life, to a place where it's as happening as you can take, where the frequency of the action is at a level you can manage comfortably, where there's enough challenge for you to change into what you want to become.
Friends you can make, wherever you go, new ones, though the presence of old ones helps. I guess we've all got to be open to the new as far as this goes--it comes with the exploration of new ideas, it's a given.
But, hey, we mustn't be so dismissive of what you DID achieve in your numerous As, even if the echoes of the hooha have long faded from memory. If you worked hard for it, then be forever pleased with it. No room for false modesty here. Just see it for what, as Weiyang said, it was--an outcome of discipline. As long as you see that as a mere subset of the greater education (re: my posting COUNTER CULTURE, today) i reckon you'll all do just fine.
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