His lecturers let him sleep in class

His lecturers let him sleep in class

WHEN Iwan Yuliyanto's lecturers at Singapore Polytechnic (SP) see him sleeping in class, they try not to wake him.

Because they know that unlike other students who doze off because of nights spent partying, he has a good reason.

Iwan, 21, has to work two part-time jobs so that he can afford to stay in school.

With only four hours of sleep each night, the only time the full-time student has to study is while travelling from home to school.

Yet, the Indonesian-Chinese student, who studied accountancy, still managed to clinch a grade point average (GPA) of 3.98, an almost perfect score. A perfect GPA is 4.0.

That helped him emerge as the top student in his accountancy course, beating 150 of his classmates.

Scholarship

He has also been awarded a local scholarship from Sembawang Corporation to study accountancy in one of the local universities.

Because of his consistent performance, he said his teachers did not object to him sleeping in class.

'I told my lecturers that if I sleep during lessons, it means that I already know the topic well,' he told The New Paper on Sunday.

He left his home in Bintan to come to Singapore in April 2006, when he was 18.

He said: 'I thought I would have a brighter future here.'

He also said that he was the only one in his family who had gone beyond high school.

His younger sister, 20, has a high school education, and is currently working as a bank teller in Indonesia.

His father is a businessman and his mother is a housewife. They are divorced.

Before he applied for a place in SP, the other four polys had rejected his application.

Entrance test

He felt they had done so probably because they did not recognise his academic qualification - he has a poly-equivalent certificate from a school in Indonesia.

He said SP was the only poly which allowed him to sit for the entrance test.

After coming here, he took on jobs in Subway and Starbucks to pay for his school fees, which cost $1,300 per semester.From Mondays to Fridays, he works three days in Subway and two days in Starbucks from 6.30pm to 11pm, earning $4 an hour.

While it was tough for him to juggle two jobs and his studies, he said he was inspired to succeed by his mother.

He said: 'She is a wonderful, very beautiful lady.

'I want to do her proud.'

- Audrey Tan Ruiping, newsroom intern

This article was first published in The New Paper.