Jane Ng - Class of '84
The first recipient of DOGA's Dr. Symons Scholarship was Jane Ng, Headgirl 1985. Delpha Ho of the Editorial Subcommittee of DOGA met her for a chat on 22nd November 2002.
In 1973, Jane was one of the first batch of students to enrol in the Diocesan Girls' Junior School as it now stands. She went through her years in DGS (all the way up to Form 7 in 1986) not only performing well in academics but was very active in sports and various extracurricular activities. With the Dr. Symons' scholarship, Jane went on to the London School of Economics where she took her Bachelor of Laws and Master of Laws degrees. After spending 8 years in England, she returned to Hong Kong and very soon afterwards, began taking an active part in DOGA. Jane was the assistant secretary of DOGA from about 1996 and have since 1997 been honorary secretary of DOGA.
Jane is now a mother of one daughter, slightly over 3 years old, and is practising law as a partner with a major international law firm in Hong Kong. In the meantime, she still dedicates time for DOGA as its honorary secretary.
Amongst the many fond memories that Jane had of her life at DGS (it took her quite a while to decide which ones to tell), was her playing the piano for assemblies. "I really like having that [the assembly] to start each day at school - that is the one thing the entire school did together on a regular basis." One of the highlights of assembly for her was to hear Dr. Symons' inspiring words for the day. Also fondly remembered are music lessons with Mrs. Chiang in DGJS, practising hard with the choir and other soloists at lunch times for Music Festivals (very difficult to get anything out of the old Bluthner in the Senior Hall) and playing Netball (nearly all the time). Being asked to sketch a bowl of fruits at art class or anything related to art/handwork (which was not, apparently, one of Jane's many talents) plus always being bottom half of the class at Maths (Mrs. Choy always used to distribute Maths tests results from top dog downwards and after about 20 names and you still haven't got your paper back, you begin to wonder...) rank amongst the worst memories of her school life - that just goes to show how fulfilling and enjoyable her time at DGS had been for Jane.
Jane felt that education at DGS cultivates independence, a strong sense of responsibility and principles in its students and nurtures the "steel" underlying the varying and diverse characters of DGS girls, all of which are qualities which enable DGS girls to excel in what they do whether in school or in life. Jane's advice to existing students is this: "Take advantage of the encouragement and room which DGS gives you to develop your potential (be it in academics or your other interests), your creativity and your individuality. "