Ashton 在 2025 年 SPM 考获 10A，目前正在 Kolej Yayasan UEM (KYUEM) 修读 A-Level，并朝着 Actuarial Science（精算学） 的目标前进。
除了课业上的表现，Ashton 在中学时期也积极参与课外活动及体育运动，曾：
代表学校参加 2025年全国及全州国语论坛比赛，并获得冠军队代表资格
代表参加 全国 U15 篮球锦标赛• 2022年：殿军
• 2023年：亚军
代表马来西亚参加 U16 印度尼西亚东南亚篮球锦标赛，并获得亚军 晋级 U16 卡塔尔亚洲篮球锦标赛这些经历，也成为了他成长路上的一部分。
这次，他特别写下了这篇文章，和建中的学弟学妹分享自己从备考、参加 BNM Scholarship assessment，到最后获得奖学金的经历。
没有“天才学生”的光环，也没有什么完美剧本，更多的是那些别人看不见的努力、紧张、不安，还有一步一步走出来的勇气。
他说：
“You don’t need to be a flawless robot to make it into the rooms you are aiming for.”
也许这句话，正是他想送给学弟学妹最好的鼓励。
以下是 Ashton 的分享：
Behind the Quiet Hours
By Ashton Lai (Class of 2025 | Bank Negara Malaysia Scholar | KYUEM)
If you had walked up to my younger self in the familiar corridors of Kian Kok Middle School—probably while I was sweating through my uniform in the Sabah heat—and told him where this journey would lead, I would have laughed in your face.
Back then, my world was beautifully simple. Early morning classes, the chaotic noise of the schoolyard, and the endless quest to keep my grades afloat. The Bank Negara Malaysia scholarship felt like something meant for people in a completely different universe. BNM scholars were figures you read about in the news—destined for boardrooms and national impact. The idea that a kid from Sabah could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them sounded like a wild fantasy.
Before any scholarship portal opened, there was just the quiet, painful grind. For months, my entire universe shrank to the radius of my desk lamp. Late into the night, long after the house went silent, I’d sit staring at SPM formulas until they started looking like alien hieroglyphics. To focus fully, I made the heartbreaking choice to step away from the sport that had defined so much of my youth, channelling all that pent-up competitive energy straight into my textbooks. It was an exhausting, solitary loop. But looking back, those quiet, late-night hours were where the real foundation was poured.
When the exams finally ended, I didn’t cast a wide net with dozens of applications. But when the BNM opportunity opened up, I figured, why not take the leap?
The real weight of that leap hit me when I arrived at Sasana Kijang in May for assessment day.
The night before, sitting at the dinner table, I realised I was surrounded by absolute titans. I was casually sharing a meal with straight-A+ scorers, national olympiad champions, and teenagers who probably ran large-scale community projects on their weekends. The environment was intimidating, made even scarier by how genuinely humble everyone was. Nobody was flexing their grades; their brilliance just hung in the air. A sharp feeling of inadequacy settled over me, and I chose to keep my own background very quiet—partly to stay grounded, but mostly out of sheer panic.
By D-Day, my nerves were completely fried. We survived a fast-paced morning group case study, and then came lunch. My stomach was in such knots that I couldn’t eat. I just sat there, pushing my food around my plate like it was a complex puzzle. A few BNM officers sat with our group, and I tried my absolute best to chat normally, desperately trying to mask my internal screaming with a calm, functional-adult persona.
The wait in the auditorium afterward was the peak of the agony. Everyone around me was in full panic mode—muttering under their breath, frantically rehearsing interview answers, and pacing back and forth. I had absolutely no idea what I was even supposed to be rehearsing. So, to blend into the sea of frantic scholars, I pulled out my iPad, put on my most serious academic frown, and mindlessly scrolled through Instagram just to look busy. To anyone walking past, I looked like a genius deep in contemplation over global monetary policy. In reality, I was just checking stories and trying to remember how to breathe.
When my name was finally called, I walked into the interview room and froze. Sitting across from me were three assessors. Two from the morning session, and the third? The exact BNM officer who had just watched me play with my food at lunch. Before the intense formal questioning could even start, he looked at me with a soft smile and asked: “You didn’t eat a lot during lunch, are you feeling really nervous right now?”
That single, observant question burst the bubble of tension in the room. It wasn’t a trap; it was a moment of genuine human empathy. I realised right then that they weren’t looking for a flawless, robotic genius. They just wanted to know the actual person behind the paper.
When they asked about responsibility and leadership, I dropped the rehearsed script. I spoke about the very unglamorous, steady reality of managing class funds for five years as Bendahari (and chasing friends for money). I talked about the sheer willpower it takes to rally tired students as Green House Captain during Sports Day. I spoke about my athletic background—not boasting about medals, but sharing the grit built in sweat-drenched training sessions representing my state and country, and how coaching beginner-level kids back home taught me the true meaning of patience. I stopped trying to be the “perfect” candidate I thought they wanted, and simply became the person Kian Kok had quietly built me to be.
A few weeks later, the offer letter finally landed in my inbox, confirming that the leap had paid off — and making me the only candidate from Sabah selected in this batch. (And for the record, that waiting period was absolute agony—just a relentless loop of refreshing my email every moment possible and second-guessing everything I said in that room.)
Today, my mornings look entirely different. Waking up on the quiet, intellectually charged grounds of Kolej Yayasan UEM (KYUEM) to pursue my A-Levels, the familiar sea breeze and canteen food of Kota Kinabalu feel very far away. The pace here is rigorous, and laying the groundwork for a future in Actuarial Science is no joke. But stepping onto this campus wasn’t the finish line; it was just a new starting block.
To my juniors reading this from a desk back home in Sabah: your background, your everyday school responsibilities, and your quiet hours of hard work are far more powerful than you realise. You don’t need to be a flawless robot to make it into the rooms you are aiming for.
Trust the foundation you are building right now in those very hallways. The leap from Sabah to wherever you want to go is absolutely possible.
