It’s come to that time of the year, where textbooks and notes become attached to your palms, while your neck and back hurts, hunching over your desk, summarizing your notes to the simplest of forms so that you hope to reduce the studying material. Yes; it’s my first official exam period at college.
I was never good at exams in high school. I could have been if I actually applied myself, but alas I always found something better to do, like watch TV or clean out an over-flowing cupboard. EVEN pack the dishwasher for my mother, which never came naturally in those years. Procrastination happens to be a really good friend of mine and I’d like to think I have A.D.D (I’m sure I have some of the symptoms; when it suits me.)
Anything, from the smallest of things would distract me and before I knew it, I was focusing on something miniscule instead of the pieces of paper spread out in front of me on my bed, with their brightly, illuminates strips invading the page.
When it came to the exam, I would sit down in my designated seat and these instances had to be the only times I could foresee the future: I knew I wasn’t going to pass that particular exam. I guess I became good at coming up with many different creative answers that I would hope the examiner would look over for all my artistic effort. No such luck. I would then have to sit and stare at either of the four sports hall’s walls because I didn’t know half of the answers and I gave up, finishing two hours before the end of the exam. Might I just add that high schools are full of shit: There was no such thing as finishing, handing in your paper and leaving. You had to sit and wait until the finishing time and they didn’t even offer to take your paper and let you read a book. Assholes. They obviously thought this would encourage us to rush through our papers so we could go early and maybe, for once, they were right. They knew us too well obviously.
I would always think afterwards, maybe I should have studied? After seeing all the top achievers walk out the exam with smiles as wide as the Mississippi river due to confidence of acing that exam, I would go home and think: “Shit, I am just lazy”. The consolation that half of my year shared the same habit as me, made me feel slightly less guilty, as well as the excuse that we used to justify our laziness: Exams don’t count for much at the end of the term, I did pretty well in assignments, so I should be fine. Yes Gemma, keep telling yourself that.
The teachers weren’t stupid either. They knew who we were and that we weren’t prepared to secure our educational futures by diving into our textbooks until midnight every night. They could do nothing about it. They knew we were probably out getting smashed the night before our Maths Paper 2 exam or just sitting on Mxit (which was the in-thing, back in the D).
You would really feel like an asshole, come end of term on break up day and they have a teachers-parents evening, where they used to physically hand your report over to your parents. Could there be a more barbaric method of doing this? What happened to primary school, where you got your report YOURSELF along with a sticker and a party pack? I will never understand it.
Anyway, having the awesome mother I have, she wasn’t too phased that I didn’t knock my marks or that I wasn’t chosen for SRC. She just cared that I passed (even if it was barely). She hated these evenings just as much as I, as it was policy that we had to go WITH OUR PARENTS. So we could wait our turn outside each classroom and then sit directly opposite the people I couldn’t stand or fathom and hear them give their blunt and egotistical opinions on me, in front of my mother, who was thinking at the back of her mind: You idiot, don’t you know that they tell you to scrap everything you learnt about accounting in high school, when you attend University? (Just so you know, my mother is in the accounting and tax industry, so she had a right to think that.) Anyway, we gritted our teeth and went with it, finally receiving my report. I managed to pass each term by the skin of my teeth, not because I was stupid or struggling, but because I just wasn’t interested. Getting tattooed and pierced was more interesting. That’s another story though (This led the principle calling my mother into his office and the entire school being able to hear her screaming at him from down the empty passage ways.) Go mom! You taught me well! “You complain about my daughter having a piercing, WHICH SHE TAKES OUT DURING SCHOOL AND REPLACES WITH A SEE THROUGH SUBSTITUTE BUT YOUR STUDENTS WALK AROUND TOWN LOOKING LIKE SLOPPY GANGSTERS. SORT YOUR PRIORITIES OUT!” I hope to be the parent my mother is, one day.
I passed Grade 11, barely and entered Matric, slightly less enthusiastic and with an attitude. I ended up leaving (and I want to kiss the ground, still today) in the first couple of weeks of matric because I realised that I could excel better somewhere else, where I wanted to give my energy and my all. To cut a long story short, I ended up doing home schooling.
Now, if you knew me way back then, you would have laughed (like many of my friends and my family) and said: Are you and your mother crazy? You barely survived high school? I will admit I was too lazy to go to college, with routine, as well as leaving it to late to enrol, so home schooling through a company was the only option, the cheapest too.
I promised my mother I would work and do it, whether she was crazy or not to trust me with the workload, is another story.
To myself, my friends and my family’s utter shock, I actually became disciplined and sat down every day for set hours and did the work (assignments weren’t necessary and I basically had to learn everything parrot fashion.) I loved this because I could do what I wanted during the day (if needed and just catch up at my own pace) as well as watch Dr Phil and Ricki Lake during my lunch break. Now, who can say that had those tempting opportunities?
This took about a year until I had to write the dreaded exams. With this choice of education, they make you write at a public school, under supervision. Guess what school in my area was the only registered school? Ocean View High School. An experience in itself.
My mother had to drive me every day of the exams into the school grounds, while 10 year olds were sniffing glue out of brown paper bags on the pavement outside.
Besides the fear of my own safety, the exams were piss and I didn’t even study that hard. And guess what? I got to leave when I was finished. What a blessing, I felt extremely smug with myself.
The downside of this was waiting months for your results, which solely depended on your exam mark because there weren’t any other marks to count. Nerve wracking.
I PASSED! With flying colours and might I add that I never got such good marks in school. So, what does that say about the school and the teachers if I was able to do really well BY MYSELF but really badly WITH A TEACHER IN A CLASSROOM. I still laugh to myself today, thinking about it.(I must add that about a month after I left matric, a rumour was circulating around school that Drop-Out-Gemma was becoming a tattoo artist, which I wish, I was only dating a tattoo artist. My cousin who happened to be in the same year as me decided to inform my accounting teacher of this, who I couldn’t stand. Apparently the look on her face was priceless and I still wish that today, I could have witnessed that. What a slap in the face to hear that your student dropped accounting and would rather prefer to poke people with needles, often in the most uncomfortable and dodgiest places?)
Anyway, so I proved numerous amounts of people WRONG by actually doing really well by myself, I even proved myself wrong and this is probably one of the top things that I am proud of.
Currently attending college, I have realised that this was the perfect time to do it. I have matured and grown up and I am at the right stage of my life to do it well. I have received really good marks and feedback. My parents are so proud and I am proud to see and hear those marks. I haven’t received anything under 60% and I plan to keep it that way.
As for these upcoming exams, I am still telling myself that the marks don’t contribute that much to the end of the term mark. Which has been validated by the Head of my department ;)
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