It's the first post! First of many, I hope. This one is a bit long, but with CSEC results coming out, I thought it was important to share this message to all my fellow students who are stressfully waiting to open that portal.
Hey you.
Yes, I'm talking directly to you. Whether you've just woken up, are sitting down to eat, taking a break from scrolling social media, trying to study at your desk or anything else you might be doing, this message is for you.
Close your eyes and take a deep breath. I know how you feel right this moment because I feel it right along with you. The dreaded day is approaching, or has arrived, depending on when you read this. We are about to be assigned a number from one to seven that represents the culmination of the most stressful periods of some of our young lives. When I put it like that, it sounds silly, a simple digit bearing so much weight. But I know that the brevity of this situation cannot be understated. For us, this number is a symbol of the quality of the work that we put in for the last two years, for some maybe even more, for others, a little less. Regardless, the ordeal that we passed through between June and August of 2021 seemed like an experiment designed to test just how far students can be bent without breaking. Simply making it through the exams is a testament to just how resilient we are. Even if you didn't make it through all of them, I'm proud of you, because going into that exam room was the furthest thing from easy.
I think it's fair to say that this exam season was not what we had expected. Since entering high school, each exam season has come and gone and we observed the older students pass through exams with the nagging sense in the back of our heads that one day, that would be us. May to June of 2019, our third form year, was the last time we would be passive observers of exam season, and in what seemed like literally no time, we ourselves were buying pens and pencils, making sure our uniforms were ironed and that we had our timetables and our IDs, and most importantly, our masks. This exam season was unlike any other, and we were the guinea pigs in an experiment that never should have been allowed to happen.
We all have the burden of expectation on our shoulders, whether self-imposed or inherited. All we've heard for five years of high school is "1 this", "1 that", "Make sure you get a 1." The weight of the expectations of our parents, guardians, teachers, family members, friends and our own desires dug holes into hearts. But the thing is, all these expectations were made with normal circumstances in mind. No one foresaw an actual plague shutting down schools for a year, especially not our final year. Zoom? never heard of it. We used Google in the classroom, not Google Classroom. So on March 13, when our "two-week break" from school was announced, nobody foresaw it getting this bad. Roughly 3/4 of our CXC careers were spent in front of a computer for endless hours, for some of us, the safe space of our homes was being impeded by endless Word documents and PDFs. We were forced to learn the majority of our syllabi hoping that Flow didn't cut off the Wi-Fi. We did our collaborative SBAs without any actual person to person connection. No longer could we stay after class to ask our questions, no longer could we run jokes at lunch time, no longer could we meet up after school for whatever club or sport was taking place that day. All we could do was wake up, put our uniform shirts on and open up the laptop to begin class. Very often our laptop wouldn't be closed for the next twelve hours, often even longer. Every activity moved online, and our friends, the reason most of us dragged ourselves to school every morning, were now simply an icon on Instagram, WhatsApp or Snapchat. We were truly alone, forced to tackle mountain after mountain of online quizzes, essays, practice problems and whatever else our teachers decided to throw at us, if we even had access to our teachers at all.
I don't think most of us have really sat back and appreciated all the hard work we put in. Sitting in seven hours of Zoom or Google Meet calls, five days a week at least, is not easy to do. There's no kind of engagement, very little room to ask questions, and the onus was on us to essentially teach ourselves. This is not a slight on the teachers who actually put in considerable effort, because this period was not easy for them either, but we students had it worse. I'm sure we all agree that there is nothing less appealing after a long day of talking to a camera than finding videos, past paper compilations and past notes to supplement the inadequate class experience we were having. It wasn't easy, but we did it. Even when we would rather be asleep, or watching Netflix, or taking care of our already fragile mental health, we were burning the midnight oil doing everything in our power to get those Grade Is. Worse still, the majority of these statements only apply to those of us, like myself, who were privileged enough to have steady Internet access, our own personal devices, and teachers who actually wanted to see us succeed. It's no secret that the Caribbean is not the well-off in a socioeconomic standpoint, and for the majority of students who only had one, or even none of what the privileged few had, the experience was unimaginably worse. Sharing a singular cell phone with 2 MB of data with however many siblings who also needed to go to school, no access to books that the school would normally be able to supply, being left to fend for themselves during a period that shapes so many young Caribbean teenagers' lives. Even making it to the exam room was an accomplishment, and you're all superheroes in my eyes.
Now in all this, were we wrong to expect that the examination body, CXC, would make considerable adjustments to the format of the exam to account for the global pandemic that took most of our two preparation years away? Wrong to expect considerations to be made towards giving such an important exam to children all over the region who were suffering, both physically and mentally? Apparently, we were. The examination body that claims to be "acting in the best interest of the region's children," completely disregarded any changes that would make this whole process much more equitable. There was huge uncertainty from the beginning of our 5th form year about what format the exam would take, when it would be, how much of the syllabus will be covered. It seemed as if CXC deliberately chose the worst possible answer to each of these questions. Change the format to bridge the gaps in learning? Don't play like that. Set the exam at a reasonable date with enough warning in advance? Very funny, how about students don't know when the exams will happen until well into the year, and then postponing them two weeks before they were about to start. Select syllabus topics carefully and possibly reduce them to make the experience fair for us students? No amigo we cover the whole syllabus in 8 months. The constant backpedalling and complete lack of empathy towards how we as students and teachers feel, hidden behind blatant PR statements of "caring for the children" and "doing the best they could." If CXC was going to make our lives miserable during a global pandemic, the least they could do was be upfront about it. Own your mistakes and all that. But if CXC were to hold themselves accountable for what they did to us, they would have to admit their faults. "Where there is no accountability, there will also be no responsibility," as Sunday Adelaja once said. In cowering behind a cracked façade that fooled no one, CXC could pretend that everything was fine and that they had not royally screwed up the opportunity to make adequate adjustments that was provided by last year's exam sitting. I wish I was exaggerating when I said that they were working against us, but for us Lit students, maybe Ti-Jean and his Brothers effectively foreshadowed what we would endure. We were Ti-Jean, the underdog fighting against all the odds, and our "examination body" was the Planter, doing everything in their power to crush us, break us, swallow us whole.
Despite all of that, we still did it. We put our heads down and took matters into our own hands. We were creative, we were dedicated, we were inspirational. Truly sit back and think about it. You were the one making sure you understood that math formula. You were the one doing the extra reading to truly understand the effectiveness of that literary device. You were the one finding videos of experiments on YouTube to complete your labs. You were the one connecting with friends and classmates to group study. You were the one who went above and beyond for that SBA. You were the one who sacrificed sleep to learn more about what happened in 1865 (The Morant Bay Rebellion, for those wondering). You were the one practicing with Excel and Access, or even Google Sheets. You were the one clicking every reference on that PowerPoint to learn more about that chemical process. You were the one who had to find YouTube videos to talk to in whatever foreign language you study. You were the one who took learning into your own hands, and you made it out on the other side. You deserve to be proud of what you did this year. Even if you didn't perform as well as you would've hoped on some exams, "cut yourself some slack," as a wise lady once told me. Even if you procrastinated sometimes, allowed deadlines to creep up, never ended up understanding a certain organism, didn't get around to writing that essay, you did so much more than that. The key in life is not to look at what you haven't done, but (especially in times such as these, with the literal and metaphorical hurricanes, pandemics, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes that you faced and weathered) look at what you have done.
I have always believed that the aim is not to be perfect, for we will always end up falling short in some way, but to simply be better than what we were yesterday. Allow yourself to slip up and make mistakes, you're only human, and you're still a kid. You tucked into bed as a bright-eyed fifteen or sixteen-year-old and woke up a drained almost adult. You didn't get to play in that tournament. You didn't spend your last day of school with those with whom you spent your first. You didn't get to form a friendship with that one person you never would have imagined would mean so much to you. No prom, no ball, no talent show. No lunch line, no after school vibes, no group hugs. No collective rushing to finish that one lab, no catching up on sleep on a desk that has no right to be as comfortable as it is. Yet despite all the outlets through which you can blow off steam and recalibrate being taken away from you, you persevered anyways.
So as results come out, maybe you achieved as much as you had hoped, maybe you even surpassed your expectations. Drink in the feeling, you've earned this. No one can take away the fact that you did it, and you did it well. I'm proud of you. However, if that one subject isn't as high as you had hoped, if as you open up that portal you feel a sinking sensation, allow. yourself. to. feel. Don't bottle up your emotions, let them flow. If you need to cry, do it. If you need to scream, do it. If you need to curl up in a ball and just exist, do it. It's perfectly OK to be disappointed. However, as hard as this might be to hear, you have to move on. You just do. Whether it's to sixth form, to university, to a job, or to something that you haven't quite figured out, look forward. In looking over our shoulders continually, we rob ourselves of the chance to both appreciate where we are currently and where we're going. As much as the MCU would like us to believe, we can't change the past. But what we can do is work to shape our future. A bunch of Roman numerals assigned to different academic undertakings you have completed is not who you are. You with no knowledge of your subject grades is just as beautiful, kind, loving, intelligent, inspiring, passionate and destined for greatness as you are with the knowledge of your grades seared into your cerebral cortex. You aren't defined by your grades. While they make force you to alter your plans, you have to trust that it's for a purpose. I try to always remember that in Jeremiah 29:11, God makes sure we know that "I know the plans I have for you...Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you hope, and a future."
Take time to relish your achievements. Three Grade Is is better than none. Your passing of the exams is a testament to your drive and commitment. Even still, use what you've learned throughout this process as motivation. Use the pain and anger you feel to spur you on to your next great success. And in 30 years time, when you've achieved things far beyond your wildest dreams, you can look back, whether with joy or with sadness, but with the security that in the end, those exams were just a footnote in the story of your life. We are always looking towards the next this and the next that, but too often we don't look around us. If we spend our lives just anticipating the next, what happens when the next comes and goes. Life isn't a linear path, it's not a straight line or a set of directions we can follow. Instead, life is a dance; we pivot, we twist, we jump, we move to the rhythm. Sometimes we slip up, but the beauty lies in trying again. So my last message to CSEC students in 2021 is that you are worthy, you are wonderful, and you deserve to be proud of your achievements in the face of seemingly insurmountable resistance. If no one has told you today, or after receiving your results, allow me to be the first. I'm proud of you, genuinely. You did it, all on your own. You took the risk that so many shied away from, and you are better for it. I'm pleading with you all, appreciate your accomplishments.
If you need someone to vent to, to celebrate with, or anything else, I'm all ears. My aim for this blog is to be a space where my readers are connected to me. Responding might take some time because of the difference in time zone, but my DMs are always open. TrusJus, everything will work itself out.