{"id":24436,"date":"2025-12-30T22:54:38","date_gmt":"2025-12-30T14:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=24436"},"modified":"2025-12-30T22:54:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-30T14:54:38","slug":"man-who-failed-o-levels-twice-graduates-from-nus-with-honours-learnt-my-lesson-hustled-and-graduated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=24436","title":{"rendered":"Man who failed O-levels twice graduates from NUS with honours: &#8216;Learnt my lesson, hustled and graduated&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"font-secondary pt-md text-18 font-normal leading-1.5 text-grayscale-800\">Failing the O-Levels twice became the start of an &#8220;academic comeback&#8221; for a TikToker who ultimately graduated from university with first class honours and landed a job.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-secondary pt-md text-18 font-normal leading-1.5 text-grayscale-800\">In a Christmas Day TikTok post which garnered over 55,900 views, user @mentaikofries <span><a class=\"text-primary-500 hover:underline\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@mentaikofries_\/photo\/7587486893252545812?is_from_webapp=1&amp;sender_device=pc&amp;web_id=7503766978081146389\" target=\"_blank\">recounted his academic journey, showing screenshots of his GCE O-Level certificates.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"font-secondary pt-md text-18 font-normal leading-1.5 text-grayscale-800\">&#8220;Thought I could get away not studying for O-Levels. Failed not once, but twice\u2026&#8221; he wrote in the on-screen caption.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-secondary pt-md text-18 font-normal leading-1.5 text-grayscale-800\">The next photo was a screenshot of his ITE results which showed that he graduated with a 3.0 grade-point average (GPA), securing him a place in Temasek Polytechnic&#8217;s business information technology diploma course.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-secondary pt-md text-18 font-normal leading-1.5 text-grayscale-800\">&#8220;Learnt my lesson, hustled and graduated with a 3.89\/4 GPA and a diploma with merit!&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"mb-[-8px] mt-lg font-primary text-22 font-bold leading-1.5\">&#8216;I&#8217;ve never been prouder of myself&#8217;<\/h3>\n<p class=\"font-secondary pt-md text-18 font-normal leading-1.5 text-grayscale-800\">He later enrolled in the National University of Singapore to study social sciences, graduating with a 4.48 GPA despite cramming eight modules into his last semester \u2014 three more than the usual workload \u2014 and working part-time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-secondary pt-md text-18 font-normal leading-1.5 text-grayscale-800\">In that final semester, he scored five As and three Bs, and secured a job offer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-secondary pt-md text-18 font-normal leading-1.5 text-grayscale-800\">&#8220;I&#8217;ve never been prouder of myself,&#8221; he wrote.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-secondary pt-md text-18 font-normal leading-1.5 text-grayscale-800\">&#8220;If your results aren&#8217;t what you hoped for, it&#8217;s ok. Really,&#8221; he added in the caption. &#8220;Don&#8217;t see it as the end of everything. Grades don&#8217;t decide your worth or how far you&#8217;ll go.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-secondary pt-md text-18 font-normal leading-1.5 text-grayscale-800\">In the comments, netizens responded positively, commending him for the accomplishment. In response to a query as to why he had squeezed so much into his final semester, mentaikofries also clarified that he had done so in order to take up a job offer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-secondary pt-md text-18 font-normal leading-1.5 text-grayscale-800\">&#8220;I&#8217;m a teacher and I&#8217;m bookmarking this to show my future students that a single result does NOT define your entire life,&#8221; said a commenter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-secondary pt-md text-18 font-normal leading-1.5 text-grayscale-800\">mentiakofries declined to to respond to Stomp&#8217;s queries.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"border-t border-primary-200 mt-xl mb-md\"\/>\n<div class=\"flex w-full flex-col gap-md py-md xl:flex-row xl:items-center\"><span class=\"font-primary text-18 font-semibold leading-1.2 text-black\">Get more of Stomp&#8217;s latest updates by following us on:<\/span><\/div>\n<hr class=\"border-t border-primary-200 mt-xl mb-md\"\/>\n<p>Join the conversation<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.tiktok.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.stomp.sg\/trending-now\/man-who-failed-o-levels-twice-graduates-nus-honours-learnt-my-lesson-hustled-and\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article At Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Failing the O-Levels twice became the start of an &#8220;academic comeback&#8221; for a TikToker who ultimately graduated from university with first class honours and landed&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24437,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}