The Underdog coming in from behind

I JUST read the results of an important school examination. Hundreds of students scored a lot of A's that would make their parents very proud. Asian parents, I believe, are like their counterparts in other parts of the world.
They are always worried about their children's scholastic achievements. So children are given every educational aid money can buy. Consequently, the number of top scorers is rising every year.
This year, the results look good. Of course, the newspapers published the pictures and the names of the superachievers. So far, there are only two known Top Guns. Both scored 15 A1s. That is the full and maximum score for all those have chosen 15 subjects for the exam.
During my time, my friends and I pondered deeply how many strong credits we will each have. That is, about a week before the results are released. These days, the emphasis is not passing but how many A1s, each student can score.
Looking and reading the remarkable results of my country's high school students, I feel as if my natural intelligence has suddenly been called into question. I told myself silently, "I must been a blinking idiot" compared to the present generation's super achievers.
Back in those days, we were aptly described as the "underdogs". We were the ones who usually have had a better time than all the others who achieved unnaturally superlative results. The Underdogs that we were gave us the freedom to make the world experience the unshackled joy in our hearts and limbs.
Often, after an important exam, we would organise parties or a trip to a resort beach or a holiday island. Life was for the taking for most of us. While the top scorers prepare for the next phase of their glittering academic life, the Underdogs (me included) just couldn't wait to take out our fishing rods and head for the nearest river.
Even if we catch no fish, we are not bothered. The point was to get out, get there and be there. Who cares what happens afterwards.
When I somehow made it to the university, I stayed with some science boys. The first thing I noticed about my overwhelmingly bespectacled colleagues was that they were almost never tired of studying. In fact, they studied more than they slept.
Morning, they squeezed in at least an hour and a half of book-learning. I had to fight my way out of my unmade bed and walked in half-daze to campus.
So it went on like that for several months until I got to know my science friends better. Eventually, I gathered enough courage to ask them: "How come you guys study so much?" They normally replied "casualty rate among science students is high".
Their remark is painfully true. Science is such an exact subject that if you can't get it right the first time, there's no second chance. Arts students keep writing and coming up with the most ridiculous arguments that sometimes the professors are confused and deliver a passing grade.
Once, I had the audacity to proclaim to my much aggrieved science friends that "arts graduates are generalists who end up becoming general managers who hire science graduates for their laboratories". How true. Of course, they are not amused by this revelation.
In the world of harsh realities, the Underdogs do get a break now and then. While it is not true that science graduates will end up working for arts grads all the time, the Underdogs tend to try harder and as a result score big when they hit the bull's eye.
The phrase that accompanies all Underdogs is "when you have nothing to lose, you tend to take bigger risks and consequently achieve bigger dreams than those who are secure in their own comfort zone of 15 A1s. Sounds like sour grapes? No, not really.
There's much to be said about being an Underdog and I have merely scratched the surface. If you read some of the biggest success stories ever told, you will discover that some of the greatest characters in human history are those who began life as an Underdog and then went on to conquer all their weaknesses.
Eventually, they mastered both the arts of Failure and Success, thus putting them on a level higher than those who are only familiar with either Success or just Failure.
So I say to you, fail if you must but learn from it. Success has its own reward but the lesson is incomplete.