RIP David Hartanto Widjaja
This is an old piece of news.
A week ago, David from NTU stabbed his FYP professor at the back before ending his own life by slitting his wrist and jumping off the university building.
As reported, David was refused of a higher passing grade for his FYP by the professor, which crushed his hopes in obtaining a first class honours.
To be honest, although David's despair might not be completely the professor's fault, my sympathy did not go to the latter. I can understand David's feelings--how it must have felt like for a high achiever like him not to be able to get a simple first class honours, something that appears all too easy in other universities.
For my own case, the reason given to me was that my thesis "was not good enough compared to the others". The grading system is normalized, meaning that every thesis will be put onto a bell curve, only a little portion will get the best and worst results, while the majority will have a mediocre grade.
It was a whole year worth of effort, staying late in the lab, going through emotional roller-coaster after every meeting with my supervisor, hoping that I can do better all the time. All in the hope that I can eventually get a first-class honours.
You might laugh at the stupidity of over-emphasizing on grades--grades mean nothing, why so serious about it?! But believe me, when a task takes up one whole year of your life, and the only reward of the turmoil is good grades, then praying hard every night that a first-class honours will come your way is nothing too much to ask for.
I was told that the reason my first-class honours did not come my way was because I did not give the thesis a deeper thought. Well, I'm not ashamed to say that I haven't gotten over it yet. It took me a lot of courage to accept the fact that I wasn't good enough for what I hoped for. But I believe that it will take a longer time before I can get over it completely.
We might appear like sour-losers. Somebody who cannot take failures open-heartedly. The only thing I can say is that, if we hadn't work hard enough for it, no failure could be as heart-breaking, nor success could be as thrilling.
RIP David. Though death is never a solution, I'm sure you did not have another way out.
posted by alisonwks @ 9:56 PM
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