Tse Yan-fat, a taxi driver on night shifts, will graduate with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree in Chinese Humanities at the end of 2003 after nine years of studies.

Yan-fat has worked in a number of fields after Form 5, including as a garment merchandiser, transport driver and paging station telephone operator. He has also started a business in selling computers. 'I was not keen about studying in school. After all, it was not difficult to get a job then. When my career seemed to be getting nowhere, I began to see the need of studies. So I enrolled in the OUHK in the hope of getting a formal qualification. I have always liked to know more about Chinese culture, history and philosophy, so I chose Chinese Humanities. You can only sustain your eagerness in learning more about a subject if you are really interested in it,' he said.
 
 

Yan-fat spent ten to 15 hours every week on studies and took two to three weeks to prepare for the examination of each course. As a result of his effort, he got good grades and was awarded a scholarship. 'The scholarship was a great encouragement to me, not just for my future studies but also in my entire life. Originally I planned to use it for further studies. But my business had been hard hit by SARS. The scholarship was a timely relief and had made up my loss in income. I had also been given tuition fee loans by the University before. I would not have been able to continue my studies had there been no such help,' he said.

Yan-fat thinks lifelong learning is very important. 'Getting some knowledge every day can help relieve the pressures of work and make you a more cultured person.' He called on people interested in studying at the OUHK to adopt a step-by-step approach in selecting courses and to pay attention on how to allocate time for studies. Yan-fat hopes to study further for a Master's degree and have the opportunity to teach in the future.
 
 
 
2002-2003 OUHK Annual report