Still learning lessons from SSEE

One of my idiosyncrasies is that I like to keep memorabilia – old papers from school, scrappy artwork drawn during a particularly boring class, miscellaneous stuff. Now, I’m by no means a packrat, anything quite of that (disturbing) magnitude, but I do hold on to enough stuff that my drawers and nooks are quite chock full.Sifting through some of my miscellanea, I stumbled across (literally stumbled, given the amount of things I have strewn across my floor during CAPE exams – much to my mother’s consternation) my old speech from my primary school graduation. I found the actual copy – not one of those new-fangled ‘soft-copies’. It’s the original hand-written one – with all of my scribbles and creases from me nervously folding and unfolding it countless times in the interminable countdown until my name was called.I’ve never been placed on death row, having never committed any significant sort of crime, but waiting to deliver that speech felt like I was waiting to get my lethal injection. Or at least that’s how my 10-year-old brain interpreted it. I can be ‘slightly’ melodramatic sometimes.But getting back to the actual speech, re-reading it seven years later, I’m proud to say, it only made me cringe about 10 times. The speech was quite a tell-all, with me revealing such scandalous nuggets of information about myself like the fact that I’m a picky eater and that I used to go to bed at 8: 00 pm in sixth grade. (Gasp) But on as serious note, the things I had emphasised as being crucial to me doing well at SSEE (yes, SSEE, from the dinosaur days – not the NGSA these youngsters are writing now!), were completing the syllabus and the expectations the teachers and headmaster had of us.And it was much more than expectations – there was a drive to do well. We were motivated – inspired even – to do well. There were perks for excelling at every step of the way. Badges pinned onto you in front of the entire school to reward you for doing well.You got the literal “round of applause”. There was the promise of your name on the school’s honour board for upcoming generations to see that you made the top 10 at SSEE. It was corny but it worked.At a very early age, we were made to understand that things like the SSEE exam could determine what kind of lives we would lead for the rest of our lives.And it was a heavy burden, but being young and altogether not very inquisitive about these things, we took it as a given that we had to work 50+ math problems every night.That was school. We didn’t question it – we just griped. We didn’t rebel against being trained to become corporate slaves. We did our work, we competed against each other, we flew kites on the field, we thought our lives would be set if we got the school of our dreams.And then we attended the schools of our dreams – and all of the illusions were shattered. Okay, okay, I’m being melodramatic again.But in between trying to find a foothold in this new school, this new environment, we lost some of that drive. We entered our secondary schools as first formers and we were treated like first formers, like the ‘babies’ of the school.There was no longer any sense of urgency pushing us. There wasn’t that life-or-death drive propelling us forward. There was just the promise of another make-or-break set of exams – the mystical CSEC exams that were a whole five years away.Five years is a long way from now right? We a have a long time before we have to deal with anything massive like SSEE. And importance was always given to the older students, solidifying our feeling that the things we were doing weren’t that important yet.Gradually, we lost that sense of purpose and some of our discipline. And it’s so much more difficult to regain discipline than to lose it.Some of us managed to build up back our discipline in time for CSEC, some of us never quite recovered and weren’t functioning at the same level that we were at in sixth grade.So to the students who’ve just received their results – Congratulations! And I hope you thoroughly enjoy your secondary school life.Have fun! But at the same time, try to not forget your sense of purpose. Hold onto that desire to do well, to do your best.And to quote Leonora Primary School’s motto, “Strive ever after excellence”.