Confessions of a Cat-holic (6)

Karen scored 7As in HKCEE. I scored 8As and Sharon studied abroad at a prep school on east coast America after F.4. But neither of us was the ultimate winner in academics in school. Jane had been the valedictorian of our year since grade 1 all the way through senior year of high school. There was no one who had the guts to challenge her status in school. Her grades always surpassed the salutatorian by at least 20-30%. Sharon was friendless, but at least we talked to her. Jane was an absolute loner, so isolated and deserted that no one even knew what was going on with her. Maybe we didn't care enough. Maybe Jane didn't care enough about us either. Not that we were jealous of her academic achievements, nor were we purely evil showing hatred towards her for no reason. It was more like Jane being way too occupied with her studies that we did not want to interrupt her way onto championship.

Allegedly, Jane didn't watch any TV or cartoon as a kid. We wanted to mingle with her and hopefully got a glimpse of her world but we just couldn't quite find our way in there. Like many other valedictorians across the band 1 school circle, Jane saw everyone else as a threat. Please never talk about life beyond classroom with her. Everything else beyond exams and school results could be an evil distraction to Jane. Oh dear Jane, life was a rat race to her and she was determined enough not to let anyone get in her way to seize her precious number 1 ranking in school.

I personally tried to talk to her but it was almost impossible. She thought I wanted to drag her off the chart by talking entertainment with her. She never listened to the radio and did not have an idol whom she looked up to. She despised popular culture and never had any play time with herself. All she did was studying and drilling problem sets. If she had any free time, she would practise piano and learned classical music. Her intention was very straightforward. There was nothing that mattered to her except a law degree at HKU. Everything else was an interferance to her life goal. It would not be difficult for anyone to conclude that she had been happily and contently all by herself throughout her entire youth and childhood. That holy grail of legal professionalism kept her motivated 24/7 from grade 1 all the way to college.

She said she wanted to become a lawyer. It was apparent that she was all in for the money, even though she lived in one of the Evelyn Towers on Cloud View Road. She was aiming for more, maybe a house on the mountain? I was not sure if she really knew what it took to become a solicitor or barrister but I didn't think grades mattered that much. I tried to convince her that she needed to have a life outside of classroom, otherwise she could be a public hate figure when she grew up. I needed some ice breakers and so I told her about some TV shows that I was watching. That didn't turn out well. She threw a volleyball at me in our physical education class and I almost lost my vision. After that, I just realized I could never afford to be a nice person in Hong Kong. I wouldn't try to correct anything anymore. I would sit back and just let the devil do its work.

I wanted to tell Jane the truth that public examination results were more like a prerequisite, or just one of the means to get to the end. But instinctively she ruled out whatever I said because my academic standing was closely after hers. She obviously was manipulated. Misled, even? Not sure by whom. It could be the media, or her evil relatives who told her about lawyers' pay in the 70s. All I knew was that things could be different nowadays, after some 50 years since the establishment of a law department in HKU. A lot could happen in half a century. Well, nevertheless, she did end up working as a solicitor at Baker, a renowned international law firm with competitive pay. I was not sure why she quitted the industry after her traineeship and a few years of legal practice. Hopefully she would find out one day that life could be a jungle in Hong Kong. You would need more than grades to be successful here.