By Ng Ziqin (20S03H)
Back when I was in JC, I often regretted not applying for the Humanities Programme at the end of Year 4. My JC transcripts tell the tale of a not-so-bright BCME student who made a wrong choice and wanted out. Every H2 pass on my Y5/6 report cards was a struggle, hard-fought and often lost.
To escape the bleak uncertainty of my academic life, I threw myself into writing articles for my CCA, Raffles Press. The worse I felt, the more I wrote. I wrote book and movie reviews, volunteered for coverage articles, and investigated the weirdest things like where the exam writing paper came from and why RI students wore different house shirts. Besides training me to write regularly, my time in Raffles Press was also when I first began to write for an audience and not a teacher or Cambridge examiner. I became known for being a writer, and felt proud whenever my classmates and friends texted me to congratulate me on a new article or tell me that a joke I’d written had landed. JC might have shattered my self-perception of being a good student, but writing for Raffles Press helped to rebuild my confidence and sense of self-worth. By the end of Year 5, I realised with some astonishment that I had amassed a modest writing portfolio. Later, I used this to apply for a freelance writing position that paid $150 an article. This marked another milestone for me the first time I was paid for writing—and I began to think of writing as a legitimate form of work instead of merely being a hobby.
To my relief, I passed my ‘A’ levels and did well enough to apply for several local university programmes I was interested in. But though it seemed like things were looking up for me, the rejections kept rolling in – from my dream programme at Yale-NUS College, the Public Service Commission, MINDEF, and… a guy I’d been dating for three months. Amidst this sea of rejection, I turned back to my refuge—writing. I remembered an Instagram ad for the Epigram Books Fiction Prize that I’d seen months ago, while doomscrolling over a Happy Meal (a treat for myself, after a Chem paper that had gone badly). With nothing much going on in my life and realising that these eight months would be the longest uninterrupted break I would have for a while, I decided that I was going to spend this time trying to write a novel.
Although I’d already had some experience with writing for an audience and writing for a living, writing a novel was very different from what I was used to as it amounted to a huge investment for a very unlikely payoff. Unlike the articles I was able to complete in a single sitting, a novel wasn’t something I could finish writing in a short burst or two. Novel writing demanded discipline, perseverance and an almost blind faith that what I was doing would bear fruit. At this point, I still wasn’t very sure what “worth it” looked or sounded like to me—getting my book published?
In the end, I think there were three things which worked in my favour. First, the fact that the world was still in the throes of COVID meant that I wasn’t missing out on very much by choosing to stay home and work on my novel. Second, I was still living with my family, so the consequences of the novel not working out were not going to be very dire. And finally, because I decided to set my story against the backdrop of Singapore’s education system, writing my novel was a very cathartic process. Processing my thoughts and feelings about the education system I’d been through felt like a form of therapy after the highs and lows I’d been through after 12 years in the education system—the burnout I’d experienced first-hand and the doubts I’d grown to harbour about meritocracy. Even if my novel never saw the light of day, the process of writing it was rewarding enough, in and of itself, that I didn’t mind.
I quit my internship and committed to writing 60,000 words by August. I scheduled writing days when all I would do was sit at my desk and type, and non-writing days when I would go out and explore local museums, meet up with friends who were flying off to study abroad and do anything except write. I tried out different writing software after my RI Microsoft Word institutional access expired and Google Docs lagged out on me past my 50th page. I tried writing with a monitor (highly recommended), and on my phone (not recommended). I showed early drafts to friends for feedback, and wrote and rewrote scenes.
By end-July, I had a manuscript that met the word minimum and that was in submittable condition, even if I felt like there was still a lot of room for improvement. Without much hope that it would be chosen, I sent my manuscript off for the contest.
For months, there was no news. Then, in October 2021, I received an email with very exciting news: Epigram had shortlisted my manuscript for publication. However at this stage, my work was still very raw. It took another year of editing and rewriting before my book was finally published as Every School a Good School in October 2022.
I was shortlisted for the prize at the end of 2021—this was when I found out that my manuscript was going to be published.
Today, Every School a Good School is on its third print and I can’t imagine how different my life would be in a world where I hadn’t spent my post-As break writing it. Yet, it’s incredibly easy to think of any number of events that could have changed this fact of my life—if COVID never happened, if I hadn’t decided to go for McDonald’s after a bad Chem paper and seen that Epigram ad on Instagram, or if I hadn’t felt so despondent after receiving that series of rejections that I remembered the ad months later and decided to spend half a year writing a book.
The distance of the past five years has also helped me realise that this chain of ‘what ifs’ might go back even further. The unhappiness I felt in school led me to spend more time on my CCA, providing me with a platform to regularly practise writing for an audience. This led in turn to my first paid writing opportunity, an experience which later gave me the confidence to quit my internship and focus full-time on writing my novel. Without the struggles I experienced during my time in JC as a science student, I also might not have felt the push to look outside of school for writing-related opportunities and experiences. Many of the negative emotions I felt during this period also ended up informing my views on the education system, some of which eventually made their way into Every School A Good School.
Even though there’s every possibility that my JC life could have been much better if I had chosen differently from the start, I no longer regret my choices, or how I spent my time in JC. Every experience I faced, no matter how bittersweet, played a role in shaping the person who wrote the book I did.
If you’re reading this while stuck in a similar situation, I hope that my experience has encouraged you to look beyond school for options and inspiration! Besides relying on Stamford for internships and competitions, it might help to look out for opportunities on more informal platforms, like the social media pages of your favourite brands and companies. And to anyone who’s finding the JC experience a struggle for different reasons, please remember that you are not alone.
