On Mediocrity in the Bellcurve Machine
- Helene Ng
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
From gold trophies to self-liberation: Join our writer, Helene, as she explores escaping Singapore’s ruthless rat race to reclaim joy, passion, and purpose.
One fine day in November 2011, I stood on my primary school’s podium, holding a golden trophy and beaming with pride for the cameras– I had come first in class as a 7-year-old. Facing the bright flash of cameras and an applauding crowd with the heavy trophy in my tiny hands, that was my first taste of recognition–what it truly felt like to be invincible. A high I had always tried to chase since. Returning home with my proud parents, I saw others holding silver and bronze trophies and remarked that their colours were pretty, only to have my bubble burst with a curt warning from my mother, “You must only aim for gold; gold is first place.” That is pretty much Singapore’s culture summed up, and as a 7-year-old, I became a runner in the rat race, toiling to be ahead of the curve.
Striving for excellence isn’t a bad thing, right? After all, it imbued me with this relentless work ethic that has pretty much become my whole identity (“tryhard”, “focused”, “action-oriented”, “reliable”, I gladly took those adjectives in stride as cornerstones of my character). Just a few weeks ago, a former Year 1 classmate I ran into expressed surprise that I wasn't majoring in Psychology. Recalling my meticulous, voluntary slides for the Psych mod’s weekly jigsaw component, he mistook my hard work for sheer passion for the subject (in reality, I always knew I wanted to major in Political Science, not Psych).
I got a B+ for the mod anyway. And for nearly all other mods as well. (skill issue? simply my lack of genuine passion being exposed beyond the veneer of my mechanistic labour?)
And so, the curve became a sphere. Expecting more from the fruits of your labour, only to always end up right smack in the centre of the bell curve, stings. As for my joyous 7-year-old self standing on stage holding the hefty gold trophy up high–little did she know that her days of glory and recognition were numbered. Progressing further in Singapore’s education system only made my spiky cognitive profile more apparent (doing well for humanities subjects without much effort, while being at the bottom end of the curve for math/science, no matter how hard I slogged away). My fate as an average student was thus sealed the moment I got streamed into my ‘higher-tier’ secondary school and junior college. Basing my worth off my work ethic soon backfired in university, where the As are capped. This is, after all, the realm of big fish. Only around 30% of each national cohort make it to this point, let alone the ‘Big 3’ universities. Year 1 summer became a prolonged crashout session when the painful realisation dawned on me that I was never going to make it as an A-average/higher-tier student, no matter how hard I toiled at things.
Taking a sharp detour in plans, I left for a local exchange in another university earlier this year, to connect with old friends and to regain some enjoyment in studying without the pressure of a bellcurve. This year, grades and striving to stay ahead took a backseat: I threw myself at various hobbies in a bid to derive enjoyment from life beyond achievement–pottery painting, art jamming, reading non-major related books, philosophy, boxing, pilates, crochet, HIIT training. For the first time in my life, I truly felt like myself. Being a jack of all trades, simply allowing myself to partake in activities for the fun of it, proved to be incredibly enjoyable (maybe it's my Sagittarius moon talking…).
Truth is, the meritocratic narrative fed to us–that hard work = success, is increasingly becoming obsolete and, dare I say, a poison in our society. Just take a look at internship culture today. As people stack more internships to get ahead of the rest in employment, the intensifying hustle becomes never-ending. With everyone being extraordinary, this has become the middle line. What would have been deemed an outstandingly stacked resume a decade ago is now the norm. Under late-stage capitalism, every aspect of life is commodified. The “extraordinary” student or worker is constantly pushed to maximise productivity, to be ahead of the curve in all aspects, just to stay afloat, not to truly flourish. In Marxist theory, capitalism’s engine is the extraction of surplus value: the difference between what workers produce and what they are paid. Standards perpetually inflate to extract ever more effort and competition from individuals. As everyone achieves more, the baseline of “average” rises, compelling all to hustle harder just to maintain their place in the system. And this leads to alienation: individuals reduced to cogs in a wheel, estranged from their own creative potential and passions.
A friend I caught up with recently, reflecting on Teo You Yenn’s This is What Inequality Looks Like, highlighted a devastating insight that stood out to him. Our society is one that lavishly rewards the qualities of the privileged—productive labour, formal credentials and strategic planning, while often overlooking the profound human values nurtured in low-income households, such as generosity and community. This begs a critical question: are we blindly following a social narrative that reduces our worth to a line on a CV? In our frantic pursuit of grades, internships, and skills, we risk forgoing the intrinsic values that make us who we are as unique beings, which form the bedrock of a meaningful life (Sartre would define this as bad faith: the act of denying one's autonomy by conforming to external expectations). Singapore’s entire social architecture privileges those who can successfully perform productivity, rewarding only the metrics that favour maximum economic value extraction–not the values that make us human, like passion and kindness.
Let me be clear: the whole point of this essay is most definitely not a Marxist manifesto. Rather, I believe we as students should look beyond the bell curve and hustle, to consciously disengage our self-worth from its relentless metrics. Mediocrity is normal! That's how the bell curve is engineered. The most radical thing you can do in a system designed to make you feel inadequate is to choose your definition of adequacy. Simply finding personal satisfaction in the process of any form of labour one chooses to undertake, and not merely for the promise of a golden trophy at the finish line, should suffice as unmediocre. After all, not everyone can say they love what they do.
