True grit: Blind student scores 3 As and 2 Bs at A-Levels

SINGAPORE — She was only nine when she became blind in her right eye due to glaucoma. Three years ago, following a fainting episode in class, Amanda Chong woke up to a totally dark world, having lost sight in her left eye as well.

But the 20-year-old Pioneer Junior College student did not allow her personal travails to stop her from doing well at the GCE A-Level examinations, even though she took three years to complete her studies.

Amanda — who scored three As and two Bs — was yesterday singled out by her principal, Mrs Tan-Kek Lee Yong, as an inspiration to her peers. The student, who even managed to score an A for mathematics after getting an E during her preliminary exams, was invited on stage, where her principal shared her story of true grit with the college’s graduating class.

Amanda developed glaucoma, a condition that causes damage to the eye’s optic nerve and gets worse over time, when she was only three. In 2011, after she blacked out in class in April, Amanda was in and out of hospital for treatment that included four operations, three corneal transplants and a glaucoma operation.

But despite her health woes and having to miss school for several months, Amanda managed to remain a positive influence on her friends and teachers, said her school.

In an interview with TODAY, Amanda paid tribute to her college, calling it a catalyst to her success by going out of its way to help her with her lesson.

The school, among other things, helped her acquire JAWS, a “talking” software that allows Amanda to translate texts into speech on her laptop. This was especially crucial her text-heavy classes, such as English Literature and History.

To explain the graphs and diagrams during Economics classes, her teachers would use Wikki Stix — long, thin cylinders of wax-coated yarn — to form the diagrams on flat surfaces so that she would be able to feel them. Thanks to such extra efforts, Amanda managed to score an A in economics for her A-Levels.

Apart from conducting extra classes for Amanda, her teachers would also sit beside her and explain what she was missing whenever a video was played in class.

Amanda, who hopes to study English Literature at the National University of Singapore, is determined not to allow her blindness stop her from achieving her goals.

“I have a lot of friends with the same problem as me and if others can do it, I should have no problem doing the same. And, there’s a lot of software to help, I do not think I have any excuse to do worse than anyone else,” she said.