Generation Grit; Orphaned and homeless but full of hope

21 Nov 2018

Article featured SP’s Diploma in Computer Engineering graduate Lim Bo Zhi, whose growing years had been full of challenges. He was only 10 years old when his mother started her suicide attempts and asked him to do the same. When Bo Zhi was 14, he found her mother’s body hanging from the ceiling of her bedroom. These incidents strained his relationship with his father and he sought oblivion in computer games. He realised a need to pick himself up after two years and returned to school, mending his relationship with his father along the way. He managed to score 13 points for his O-level results, but had to experience his father’s death to pneumonia a few days after celebrating his good results. At that point, Bo Zhi not only found himself orphaned – but also homeless and penniless. However, Bo Zhi was still determined to continue his education, and had decided on SP’s Diploma in Computer Engineering. His initial worries about paying the fees were eased by a trip to the student service centre, where student officers advised him to apply for bursaries and financial aid. A kindhearted sponsor who heard about his situation through his school counsellor funded his stay at the boarding home for the next three years, and gave him a monthly allowance for his daily needs. He excelled in his studies at SP and eventually won a Defence Science Technology Agency scholarship to do a degree course at the Nanyang Technological University, where he is now a Year 1 computer science undergraduate. Home now is a hostel on campus. Bo Zhi hopes to encourage other young people who face seemingly insurmountable obstacles to seek help early. He shared that it is important to not lose hope and the fighting spirit even when it is easy to give up. (The Straits Times, pB7)