If you cross me I will cut you

On Primary School life (2014)

Primary School, also (kind of)  know as elementary+ half of middle school, is the school that Singaporean children aged 6-12 go to.

     Unlike most children who went into a local primary school at six years old, I went into a primary school at the ripe old age of 9! I was from a international school from 6-9 in order to learn and (hopefullY?) to perfect my english before I was sent into the slaughterhouse.

    My first memory of primary school, surprisingly, was the entry test that I took to determine my class allocations. In our school, classes were named A-F. With the A being the class with the most academically talented to F, the not-so-academically talented. 
 

Cruel, I know. However, I'll have to get to that at a later part :)

 Anyways, my parents were DEAD fixed on getting me into either A, B or C. I, however, didn't really care. 

  On this one sunny morning, my parents brought me to the Primary school I was supposed to be taking my test in. I remember the administration lady telling my parents (and I, but I was not listening) about the school and the facilities it had and the teachers and yada yada... 

 Soon, though, I found myself in a small white room. There, I was given 3 papers in Chinese, Math and English. I did them all to the best of my abilities and handed them up. When I did, my parents seemed wayyy more anxious than me (oops??)

  A few days later, the results were back. The office lady told me I was being allocated to class 3B. My parents were extremely relieved, but they asked the lady about how I did nonetheless.

  Apparently I was able to get 90+ for math, which they were pretty ok with. "But." the office lady turned stern "her composition on a girl having a full 3-page conversation with another girl about how nice the day was didn't impress us particularly."

   My parents tried VERY hard not to laugh. As some context, I had just learnt conversation writing a few days ago in my international school and I guess I used my newly-learnt knowledge too well! I got an 80+ for English. Which wasn't very high.

Lastly, Chinese. Being in a pure English school really didn't help me because I did not know how to write Chinese characters AT ALL. In my sheer desperation. I had copied all the helping words because I really could not write! Fortunately, as I got all the MCQs correct, they kind of just let it slide.

And, with that, I was a new primary school student in 3B! I had to wait for 3 days for my transfer to be approved and at the age of almost exactly 9, I wore a heavy schoolbag for the very first time.

When I walked into the hall on my very first day of school. I remembered my form teacher sitting me down next to the line up of 3B students. They looked at me oddly and I stared back #rebel

Soon, the national anthem sounded. I was very confused. I had never heard that song before. I numbly followed everyone else in the hall and stood up. Not sure what to do. That got me a few weird glances (again) before the anthem FINALLY finished and everyone went to their classes.

I was allocated to this group with 3 other girls and 2 other boys. I vaguely remember the girl next to me being a volleyball girl and the other guy next to me being a diabolo boy (??). Not surprisingly, after a few years, everyone in my Primary 3 group became popular. Except for yours truly.