Disclaimer: In Real Life is a platform for everyday people to share their experiences and voices. All articles are personal stories and do not necessarily echo In Real Life’s sentiments.
It’s not a surprise that there has always been a prevalent and distinctive chasm between the science stream, and the art stream. Family members, friends, and even random uncles and aunties would immediately cast judgement on you (though unspoken) the minute you tell them what stream you’re in.
All my life I was always told that the science stream was where all the “smart students” went, and that only the kids who weren’t committed to academia, those blatantly labeled ‘stupid’ and ‘lazy’, would be in the arts.
So from a young age at Form 1, I carried that stereotype with me and worked hard in the first 3 years of high school, just so I wouldn’t have ‘stupid’ stamped on my forehead by Form 4. It was what I believed, and who can blame me when basically the entire world convinced me. It was unnecessary negative reinforcement for me at its finest.
As I grew a little older, I started to question this understanding more
By Form 3, I had already made enough friends in the upper forms to see for myself what the difference between streams was like. And regardless of whichever classes my older friends belonged to, I wasn’t able to tell who belonged where if I hadn’t already known. To me, there was no disparity between them – they were all still great people.
Which made me question – “If I didn’t love doing simple Form 3 math right now, why would I choose to put myself through a more advanced version of it in Add Maths? Just to not be labeled ‘stupid’?” It didn’t make any sense to me, and it began to spark up an internal conflict.
I had to decide which was more important to me: to go down the path I was more comfortable with for SPM, or to maintain a reputation amongst everyone else, including my family members.
Eventually, I chose the art stream when I scored almost straight As for PMR
And sure enough, even though I was doing the subjects that were more suitable for me, the feeling of judgement imposed on me never went away every time I told someone I was in the art stream.
This made Chinese New Year gatherings very awkward for me, as both my older siblings went to science stream, as well as my cousins. And I couldn’t help but feel this sense of comparison between myself and them from my relatives. From all the family gossip (though I don’t hear it) to the different treatment I get from my family, all because I was in the art stream.
Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m just uncomfortable with judgement.
But despite that, I’m proud to say that I did relatively well for my studies in the 2 years. Scoring well in my strong subjects like Perdagangan and Economics really made me realise that I probably wouldn’t have done as well if I had given in to the pressure of taking up Chemistry and Biology instead.
This definitely helped in tuning out the noise. The judgement slowly didn’t matter to me anymore as long as I did well in school. If anything, my grades at the end of every term reassured me and kept me in line to remind me what was really important to me.
I got straight As for my SPM (yay!)
Fast forward to the day they released our SPM results, I honestly couldn’t say it was as nerve wracking as everyone made it out to be. Not to sound overconfident and cocky, but I believed that every paper fell in place, and I could not have messed it up.
There was never a doubt that I made the right choice in sticking to my strengths, and I believed that as long as I did my best that I could have achieved my SPM projections. And I did!
I had buddies from both the sciences and the arts who failed to hit their targets, and also those who achieved beyond them. Which went to show that it most definitely wasn’t a case of the streams that determined the end result, it was 100% individuality. But regardless of their results, I was super proud of everyone.
Today, I’m in my final year of law school, on my way to becoming a practicing lawyer
My SPM results managed to secure me a 75% government scholarship to put me through university, which is a significant aid to my family’s finances. Studying law is what I’ve always wanted to do, and I can’t say that I could have guaranteed my spot here if I had opted for another path than the one I took.
Looking back, it wasn’t easy tuning out all the noise, but it was necessary to achieve what I did. My grades at the end of every term meant so much more to me than what any random aunty or uncle had to say.
Today I can proudly say that I kept myself on the right track.
My only wish is to eradicate the nonsense discrimination imposed onto the arts stream students, and to remind everyone that all negativity does is pull someone deeper down the hole. I might have been fortunate enough to not let the judgement affect my studies, but there are tons of other students who might need your support instead of condescension. There should be no superiority between the streams.
For more stories like this, read: Malaysians Think Private Schools Are Better – But Are They Really? and I Was In Peralihan Because I Failed My BM Paper, Here’s What It’s Like
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