I cheated as a 12yo and because of that I am now a doctor.

I am a 51yo old doctor, but things could have been different. Back in 1987 I started high school as a 12yo. My parents were poor so they sent me to a public government primary school. Through hard work and a lot of savings, my parents were able to send me to an expensive and exclusive high school. I wasn’t the brightest of kids, but I wasn’t the dumbest either. I was just an average kid. Not going through the High School Prep school, made me and a small number of other boys “outsiders”. Not knowing our academic abilities, each of the outsider boys were made to sit five, 1 hour exams for maths, English, comprehension and so on. Over five days. So each exam was five hours long spread over five days. Which was never conveyed to us outsiders. So on Monday on the first day of High School, the outsiders were segregated and were put under exam conditions for the rest of the day. Each subject had 100 questions ranging from basic to university/college grade questions. Five exams completed. Same thing on Tuesday. What I found out, was that the exam question booklet we received on the second day was the same as the first. We were meant to work our way through the question booklet. When I questioned the teacher overseeing our exam room, she explained that we would be receiving the same booklet for the rest of the week. BINGO! So for the rest of the Tuesday exam block, I rewrote the questions I was not able to answer on scrap paper, as I was pretending to work out answers. Taking those questions home I asked my first year engineer student brother all the relevant maths and science questions. Showed my sister who was studying Arts, all of the English and comprehension questions. Just say with their help, I was able to breeze through the questions. So when the results came back, I was placed in the top stream of all the classes. Soon I was finding friends and peers in my classes and that their intelligence was kind of rubbing on me. Being in that environment helped a lot. Being around students and teachers that wanted to learn and teach, made learning easier. So by the end of High school, I somehow topped all my advanced subjects and I was selected to study medicine. If it wasn’t for the little 12 year old boy cheating on his grading exams. I wouldn’t have the perfect life with my beautiful family. I am truly blessed.