Gamble to take 11 subjects turns out to be wise move
by Jane Moh, email@example.com. Posted on March 22, 2012, Thursday
SIBU: Nicholas Law Lee Wei took a huge gamble when he decided to take 11 subjects in Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) but the results released yesterday showed that it was a wise move.
Law was the only student in SMK Methodist to have scored 11As.
Never been a straight A student before, he said he was pleasantly surprised to see the results.
“It was a huge gamble; I could be at the losing side. Personally, I do not think taking 11 subjects is too much.
“However, I did have doubts, especially after the May exam. I was afraid I could not finish the syllabus in four months,” he recalled.
A son to a mechanical engineer and a teacher, Law said he chose to take 11 subjects to improve his Malay and to give him a better edge for the future.
He said the triumph showed that he could handle time management quite well.
Initially, Law took nine subjects as required by the school, namely Malay, English, Moral, History, Mathematics, Additional Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology.
He then took accounting as an extra subject. But then, he was worried about his poor command of Malay, prompting him to take Commerce as well on self-study basis.
“I studied Commerce myself, no tuition. I took it because I wanted to improve my Malay subject,” he pointed out.
According to him, he only sat for the Commerce paper three times during the school semester exam to prepare for the final exam.
He said, the first was in May and the two trial examinations were before the public examination.
“I stumbled in the first exam in May and the first trial exam. The second trial exam gave me confidence that I might get a shot in getting A+ in the paper,” he said.
Asked whether it was difficult for him to study Commerce on his own, he said it was not as difficult as one might think.
It was in fact quite easy because Commerce was happening around and to enable and enhance one’s understanding of the subject all that one needed was to be aware of the happenings, he explained.
He also said his parents used to feed him with some information on Commerce when he was little.
The Malay subject worried him most.
“Malay subject was the reason why I took Commerce,” he pointed out.
He said he could not even achieve 70 per cent in the Malay paper when he was in Form 4 but after taking Commerce, he improved tremendously.
“Apart from improving my language command, Commerce gave me extra information that was very useful for my essay; it opened up my eyes a little bit to the world and in some ways, it helped me in my essay writing,” he pointed out.
Law hopes to get a scholarship to study Medicine in Ireland after this.
“However, I am keeping my option open,” he added.