Prejudication

Prejudication. A very common source for misunderstanding people. I have both been in the company of a group of where I was clearly not included, and also been part of a group of people that were unkind to one or more individuals. However, the most unmemorable event happened last year in my class. I am pretty sure almost everybody in my current class this year, 2I2, are all writing about this too. Not giving out of names, giving out random names as cover for his name. I feel that such an action is more hurting towards him if he actually read our blogs. His name is Xin Cheng. Lin Xin Cheng. I personally feel that the source of prejudication is he himself, but perhaps he was not to be blamed much, and I would slowly tell you why later on.

He, has been sleepy in classes ever since the first term. He seemed like a perfectly normal and fine student, he probably handed up his homework, didn't sleep in classes although he always seemed very sleepy. It probably started right from the start of the year, maybe he was trying his best to cope with it, but then, it probably became obvious from the time where we were briefed on Projects Day. He was among the few who didn't register for a group in Projects Day. He then had not much time to finish his project, whereas everyone else had. He formed a group with Jerry, and they had our form teacher, Mdm Lim as their mentor. Due to the lack of time, they didn't pass the preliminary round like we did. They went to preliminary round two and passed.

Also, he slowly got worse. He began to hand up some homework late, and feel asleep in some classes. He even discussed with some of us, including me, about games. Games like Black Shot and Wolf Team that he played, and also DotA that some of the rest of us play, but not him, and he even joined us in playing DotA. We didn't really expect him to join DotA and in fact, I actually thought that perhaps he could be able to cope with studies like the rest of us did. However, his predicament was pretty bad. He actually failed in the term one IH test whereby most of the rest of us got A1 or A2 for it. He was also pretty much left out, and perhaps, maybe to attract our attention, he claimed he had some sort of "sleeping disease", and also imitated some monsters in Warcraft III (DotA is part of it). Some people liked it, and others thought that he was some freak. Well, personally, I just found it rather amusing.

Also, he was the Welfare Secretary of our class. I guess he didn't do much for that post, he didn't organise CIP activities well, didn't tell our class about CIP activities, and he didn't talk much anymore. Our form teacher made me the Welfare Secretary instead and gave him a special post of Announcer for him to talk more. However, he slowly got worse. He then got late once in a while, and one week, he was actually late for five consecutive days. He had all sorts of excuses, which may be true, for example, he mistook bus 872 for 852, and once, he was actually still sleeping at 8 am when the class chairman Gary called him. Then, later on, he actually didn't come for school at all for quite some time, then he came for school, and then skipped school for the remaining year, from the time during the National Day holidays. Perhaps he didn't come later because he was always mocked at during the times he came back for school.

Everyone assumed he was playing computer games which made him unable to cope with his studies. Maybe that was true. However, later on during PE lessons, the PE teacher asked us what kind of MC he had, because his list stated that he was on long term MC. My class got worse and started spreading that he was skipping school to play computer games, skipping school because he has mental illness, and things like that. I guess everyone was wrong, for soon later I came into contact with him, and he said he was granted permission to stop attending school to prepare for next year's secondary one again. My class was wrong on that point. Nobody probably believes him anyway. I guess i believe that he was indeed given permission to skip school.

As for the excessive gaming part -- I don't think anyone really knows the truth, perhaps he himself knows it. I believe the cause of the prejudication was that he acted like a freak, making wierd sounds, imitating monsters, and things like that. But all this happened because of my class, because we didn't care for him much, because we didn't put ourselves in his shoes, we didn't have the compassion to deal with him in a more civilised manner, we didn't deal with him with empathy. Prejudication. I believe all people need is empathy for others, and the word prejudication probably wouldn't exist in this world.

Edit: I have recently come into contact with him, and according to him, he has gotten full marks for his first Mathematics test, and 93.75% for his second Mathematics test (Not too sure about the second test though, and they are both term one tests, Note: He had once gotten 2.5% for his Mathematics test last year). This is enough proof to say that nobody is stupid, or that nobody can't work hard. Also, yes, I can now confirm that my class's prejudgement about him having played computer games when he wasn't at school was wrong. I am pretty sure the rest of you can think about this slowly, about whether you should have had prejudice against him or not, for those who were in my class last year and had prejudice against him.