\n<\/p>\n
Even after the bullying in his teenage years and the uphill battle to return to school, Mr Chng maintains that he doesn’t hold anything against his parents.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n “I didn’t directly resent my parents. I tried my best to understand them,” he said. While he’s been disarmingly candid with me about his struggles so far, he pauses momentarily as he attempts to qualify his feelings about his parents. I sense that he’s careful not to cast his parents in too harsh a light.<\/span><\/p>\n “I always redirected it somewhere else, to a higher power. I’d ask: ‘Why was I put through this?'”<\/span><\/p>\n As Mr Chng took his first steps back into formal education, even mundane things like donning a uniform became meaningful milestones. But underneath his excitement, doubts and fears remained.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n “The night before I started school, I was so happy to wear the uniform. The next morning, when I had to wear it out of the house, it was very daunting,” he recalled.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n “For many years I was that kid without the uniform … suddenly I was putting on a school uniform. I felt quite embarrassed.”<\/span><\/p>\n He spent his first weeks at NorthLight adjusting to a level of structure he’d never had to face before: strict timetables, school bells and sprinting between classes. His peers were used to it by then, but for Mr Chng it was a tough acclimation after a decade of doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Adjusting to the academic rigour was an even tougher ordeal. Things like quizzes and tests were almost completely foreign to him, he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n “Even though I could read and write, when presented with the worksheet, I didn’t understand what they wanted me to write.”<\/span><\/p>\nLEARNING HOW TO LEARN<\/h2>\n