The class monitor who got dethroned in eighth grade

From kindergarten through eighth grade, I was always the class monitor. Not just because of my big bones and big head, not just because of my ability or my inclination to lead. Maybe just because the rules of conduct that my Confucian father had taught me were enough for a pack of restless, rowdy kids.

In eighth grade I overslept one morning, the first time I was ever late for school. I changed into my uniform and tried to go — I could walk in late, but I didn't know how I'd handle it. I debated it a hundred times over in my head and ended up heading into the usual arcade. I played games until school let out and went home. The one and only time I ever skipped school in my life. The next day I went back to class and wrote my first disciplinary statement. At the next class meeting, my teacher dethroned me right in front of the whole class. The world collapsed and the king lost his head.

I stopped caring about studying after that. Being class monitor had been my last bit of motivation to keep my grades up. I plunged headlong into arcade games.

At the end of eighth grade, the teachers did their recap and got us ready for the brutal ninth-grade year ahead. A huge hinge point. I was preparing for the next death: I was just too bad a student. My mother saw the situation wasn't looking good — my end-of-year report card had English below average. In the four-subject exam, if any one subject scored below two, you failed. "English is going to send you out to hawk lottery tickets, son." My mother set out to find me a tutor; selling at the market had given her lots of good connections. She asked the neighbors and found a teacher who specialized in cram-course English for people about to emigrate abroad. My mother went over to Bác Hai, who lived next door, and asked if she'd put in a word for her son. Bác Hai helped me — that's the spirit of village neighborliness for you.

In May, I carried my books over to my teacher's house, not knowing how to prepare for my first session with a private tutor. He laid out the curriculum for the three-month summer: we'd start over from the beginning, because my foundation was at the level of a fifth-grader. The goal was to get me past the exam; anything bigger was beyond me... Three sessions a week, and it felt like torture. Every other summer I could disappear into the arcade without a care, and now I was under strict supervision. Morning at the arcade, evening with my tutor. Every second I sat in that classroom, my hands and feet were cold, my ears were sealed, my eyes locked on my blank notebook, listening to the teacher point out that I didn't know anything. He made me look at him while he taught, told me to study properly — this is your mother's hard-earned money feeding you. When I cried, he handed me a handkerchief to wipe my tears, and then we kept going.

Ninth-graders started the school year early to get more study time. I met my friends, shook hands, smiled. Then we got into the actual lessons — Literature, Math, Physics, Chemistry, History, Geography. Nobody knew yet what subject the province would pick for the exam, but English had a high chance of being chosen. My class was taught by Ms. Nga, the most senior English teacher at the school; she wore a beautiful ivory áo dài, had long hair and a warm, gentle voice — I'd dreamed of being her student for years, and now I finally was. When her English class began and I heard her teach, I suddenly realized... she was teaching stuff that was way too simple! My tutor had already taken me way past this and was still pushing me. That's when I realized I actually knew a lot. I went back to my tutor and told him about the days at school: I'm finding English so easy now. Could you teach me more? I want to learn!

I was the only student to score a 10 on English in the mock exam. My high English score was what got me into Nguyễn Bỉnh Khiêm, and it was also far and away the top score among my classmates in the specialized Physics class. In twelfth grade I was singled out as the only student in all of her classes who got one particularly tricky verb-tense question right. I didn't get a 10 on the national exam because I took a girl's advice — a girl I'd just met — even though I knew the right answer. On the Literature exam I chose to analyze a poem and got a 7, and the remaining 3 points were from the Vietnamese writing section. I graduated with honors.

The girl left, and I had only a few words for my luggage. I took the university entrance exam in Natural Sciences, without English to save my score, and I failed both times. On the third try I used English to get into Saigon Aptech. The school taught entirely out of English textbooks. The programming languages were written in English. Every variable, every function, every algorithm, every database, every programming tool was in English.

I still choose to write in Vietnamese, even though my head can think in English after twenty years of making a living writing English.

Software engineers need language as a hard skill. I'd figured this out before I ever worked with LLMs; I was asking and helping people to sharpen their language skills. For your domain, for communicating with the people around you, for communicating with customers and partners. Being good at one language is enough to do everything. Learn one more, broaden your knowledge, and everything doubles.