Book excerpt: This is the true story of a boy with a simple dream—to become a man. But he fell and became a dropout of school, friends, life, himself. But with the helping hand of a teacher, he turned his life around, found friends and love, and fulfilled his dream. This is the story of how that boy went from dropout to millionaire Princeton PhD. Expelled from four junior colleges (he was labelled ‘subnormal’ and not academically inclined), Kaiwen Leong sat for the A level examinations as a private candidate while experimenting with Internet websites to try his hand at entrepreneurship. He studied hard and did well enough to be admitted to Boston University in the US where he graduated with two bachelors and two masters degrees in economics and mathematics in four years. And then he went on to obtain postgraduate degrees at Princeton University. He is a member of America’s most prestigious academic societies and has published research papers on economics, mathematics and physics. Today he lectures at Nanyang Techonological University and is an economist at Spring Singapore. Find out how Dr Leong picked up his life.