Gen Y Speaks: I was a ‘ne’er-do-well’, but my mentors helped me turn my life around. Here’s how I’m paying it forward

In the weeks leading up to GCE O-Level results day, I already had a gnawing feeling that I would not do well. 
The year was 2006. At 19, I was already lagging behind my peers because I had to repeat Secondary 5 after failing my N-Levels. 
In the midst of my despondency, I knew I had it coming.
As the youngest and only son in the family, my parents had high hopes of me academically. Dad was a taxi driver and mom was a sales assistant; neither of them were highly educated themselves. Being traditional Chinese, they firmly believed that education was a stepping stone to a good job.
Their academic expectations of me were also heightened by my two older sisters’ good performance: They were both more academically inclined, and had comfortably made it to junior college and polytechnic respectively. 
I was the ne’er-do-well, frequently playing truant in secondary school and spending most of my time at the arcade. I was an unmotivated individual with no desire to study, because I didn’t find joy in it. 
Rote learning — straight memorisation of maths formulae or science theories without knowing how to apply them — didn’t work for me. I just wanted to have fun with my friends.
The eternal optimist in me figured: What’s the worst that could happen? Maybe I wouldn’t make it into my desired course (an IT diploma in a polytechnic). Surely I’d have other options. 
But no amount of distraction or fun could help me escape my day of reckoning. 
On Feb 10, 2006, reality shattered delusion when I received my GCE O-Level results. I’d scored D7 for both English and Mathematics; my best grades were a couple of B’s for mother tongue and humanities.
I couldn’t even qualify for polytechnic at all. My dreams were dashed. 
With no other alternative, I had to enrol in the Institute of Technical Education (ITE).
Like many others in 2006, I harboured a lowly perception of ITE education, perpetuated by the (then) popularity of Jack Neo’s I Not Stupid movie series. The running joke among Singaporeans was that “ITE” stood for “It’s The End”. 
At the time, the base expectation was that in order to get a good job and salary, one would need to attain a polytechnic diploma at the very least. 
I was utterly despondent and unmotivated. I ended up barely scraping through my first year in ITE with a grade point average (GPA) of 2.0.
I didn’t know where to turn to for advice and guidance, and my grades continued to plummet, dropping below the borderline threshold of 2.0.
One day, it struck me that I might just get kicked out of ITE and fall even deeper into the sinkhole I was already trapped in. Without any paper qualifications and skills at all, I would not be able to support my ageing parents. 
I started to buck up in Year 2. 
By the power of good old-fashioned mugging, I managed to bring my GPA up to 2.4 by my final year. It was just barely enough for me to scrape through into Republic Polytechnic for my desired course, Business IT.
After completing my national service, I finally entered polytechnic at the ripe old age of 24. 
Most of my classmates were six or seven years younger than me, which was kind of surreal. 
Surrounded by teenagers, I felt an urgent need to make up for lost time. I studied, more than I’d ever done before.
Every night, after school, I would go through my notes and prepare for the following day’s lessons. 
For the first time in my academic journey, I found guidance and encouragement in a couple of my lecturers: Ms Sharon Tan, who supervised my final-year project, and Mr Soon Yoong Kit, who advised me on my further education options and was also instrumental in helping me secure an internship with Accenture in my final year.
I took it upon myself not to let down my lecturers who had invested so much time in helping me. More importantly, I realised that time and tide was not going to wait for me, and this could be my last opportunity.  
I graduated from Republic Polytechnic with a GPA of 3.73, and managed to secure a place among the pioneer batch for the marketing and analytics degree at the Singapore University of Social Sciences. 
Once again, a mentor came into my life in the form of Mr Lim Chee Han. 
Mr Lim, my lecturer in the first year and supervisor for my final-year project, was invested in helping me be the best I could be. He wasn’t like most educators I’d encountered up till that point — he didn’t like students to just memorise and regurgitate theories from textbooks. 
He offered me guidance on projects and coursework, and taught me to focus on deeper, more abstract thinking to connect the dots, which is an essential skill for a business and data analyst.
He also spent time and effort helping me build up my confidence. He was well-spoken and articulate — and, for the first time, I had a role model whose behaviour I could emulate.
In poly, I also learnt to seek out peer mentorship — or, as I thought of it, “reverse mentoring”. 
Presentations are a key component of polytechnic coursework. As someone who is not very proficient in spoken English, I often found myself struggling through them and marvelling at how articulate and assured my younger classmates were. 
Despite our age gap, I didn’t have any compunction in reaching out to ask them for guidance on polishing my public speaking and presentation skills. I would usually get ribbed by them initially because of my improper English — but any good-natured jokes were always followed up with practical, helpful advice.
Looking back at my academic struggles, I realise how mentorship had been the catalyst for real change in my journey.
Seeking and receiving guidance from others had helped me to improve in ways I otherwise couldn’t do on my own, both as a student and an individual. 
This is how I’m paying it forward.
Last year, I signed up to be a mentor in the newly launched DBS x ITE mentorship programme, organised under the bank’s employee volunteering initiative People of Purpose.
Under this mentorship programme, bank employees spend half a day each month for five months with students from ITE. I had four mentees under my charge from my alma mater, ITE College West. 
One of my mentees, Haziq, also fell short of meeting the admission requirements for polytechnic. 
Haziq, who is 19, dreams of becoming a mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter and attaining a sports science degree. But these dreams used to seem out of reach for Haziq, whose secondary school friends looked down on him and told him he would have “no future” because he went to ITE.
Over the course of the five months, as I shared my similar struggles in reaching for “impossible” dreams, I could see how my story encouraged him. He grew more confident and focused, and started studying and training hard for both his academic and sporting goals, instead of letting naysayers keep him down. 
Even though the five months are done, I still check in on him as well as my other mentees from time to time. Haziq is now in his second year at ITE, striking a better balance between his studies and his MMA training. He aims to make it to polytechnic and, in the near future, become a professional MMA fighter. 
It’s been a long, hard journey to get to this point, but what I now understand is that there are multiple pathways in life.
One path is not necessarily “better” than another; there are often many different roads to help you get to your desired destination or goal. 
Sometimes you come across an obstacle blocking the path, or even a dead end. Don’t give up; there’s always a different way forward.
Personal qualities and strengths such as determination and diligence may help you succeed, but sometimes the greatest help comes from outside yourself. Mentors can be found everywhere: In your teachers, your friends, or even your managers and colleagues at work. 
When sign-ups opened for the second run of the DBS x ITE mentorship programme this year, I immediately submitted my name again.
Ultimately, the impact of mentorship goes both ways: We can all benefit from mentors, and we can all be a mentor to someone else in need.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ryan Goh, 37, is a business analyst with DBS Bank who successfully obtained his Master’s degree in 2022.