TO PARENTS who rush to get their children into the Gifted Education Program (GEP) so they can get further in life, I say, relax. It's overrated.
I'm gifted.
Or more correctly, I was Gifted, according to a letter I got from the Ministry of Education telling me so when I was nine. (This, after I checked a few boxes on a worksheet full of tetris-like blocks.)
But I have often wondered if being selected to get a headstart in life meant my missing out on some sights along the way.
For example, while other kids spent afternoons at Far East Plaza figuring out the birds and the bees, my idea of fun was staying back in school to dissect frogs.
Or, while my friends chipped their nails waitressing in pubs or chasing celebrities in their holiday time, I pursued resume-boosting internships with the aim of landing a scholarship.
If I have had one more date, one more party, or spent one more 'unproductive' hour daydreaming or doodling, life might have been more colourful.
But opting out was not an option then. If nothing else, it was pure pride that fuelled my dogged determination to excel. I had to justify why I had my nose stuck up in the air.
I remember clearly an incident in Secondary 4, when our teachers herded my sobbing, perfectionist classmates and me into the school lab after we had just sat through a devastatingly difficult O-level science practical examination.
'You are gifted girls. If you can't do it, nobody else can,' our teachers rahrah-ed by way of encouragement after they had shut the doors tight.
We were told we were capable of achieving extraordinary things, but had to remember to give back to society.
It turned out most of us did well in the O levels, except that I did not score straight As which made me question if I was gifted at all.
During my junior college days, whenever I felt intellectually stumped, I would scrawl in frustration on my A-level revision notes: 'Come on, you're in the GEP!'
But gradually over the years, it became a non-issue. In my university days overseas, I kept mum about having been labelled gifted. I aced no sport, mastered no musical instrument and derived no mathematical formula.
I sought self-definition from opinions and hobbies, which I had sidelined in my academic pursuit. I also learnt to let my hair down. I befriended people from diverse backgrounds far beyond the boundaries of my sheltered circle of friends back home and learnt how narrow-minded I was.
At work, I have realised that a headstart is just that: It gets you off the starting block, but winning the race is still a matter of how you pace yourself.
Gifted, top boy, scholar, overseas-educated - all these labels quickly fly out of the window as the playing field is levelled. The quality of work one produces speaks for itself.
I also learnt that getting something wrong was not the end of the world, and that other factors like teamwork and humility counted, too.
So whether or not my children will be gifted does not matter as much to me now. I just want them to discover their own gifts in their own time, and on their own terms - hopefully, by standards other than just correctly checking off a few boxes in a test.
