Just Saying | Hong Kong students, take note: you don't need straight As to succeed in life

Most people have never heard of him, so let me tell you about a young man who’s been in the news recently. He’s a Swedish 25-year-old who makes a living – a fortune, actually – playing video games.

Felix Kjellberg, known online as PewDiePie, records himself having great fun doing something that many would consider a waste of time, and posts the videos on YouTube. Last year he made an estimated US$7 million through advertising revenue generated for the video-sharing website by his 37 million followers.

Let’s move on to another success story, this time from Hong Kong. Entrepreneur Howard Chan runs Hot Toys, a local company that is famous worldwide for producing highly detailed and sought-after collectibles of comic book and movie action figures. The man who never outgrew his childhood love of Star Wars and superhero plastic toys chose to earn a living making them, but he went a step further by focusing on quality and creating finely crafted merchandise that appeals to serious collectors.

Yes, we know all about famous school dropouts like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, but I’m talking about ordinary people around us proving that you don’t need academic excellence to succeed in life.

That goes for all the youngsters I see in great distress, now that the exam results season is upon us. I know they’ve heard this before, but, really, it’s not the end of the world. Far from it. The same goes for those desperate parents running from one school to another, struggling to find a suitable place for their underperforming children.

When we ran a story recently about opposition to a city-wide exam that puts students through excessive tutoring and drilling sessions, what caught my attention was the poignant case of an autistic boy who cried as he asked his mother: “Mum, what’s the point of my existence? Is it just to do homework?”