If your prayers fail as badly as you did, you’ll still be OK
When the authors of the Gregorian calendar lined up all the months to decide which month would be first, January drew the short end of the stick. It’s the most-loathed month of the year by a long margin. This hatred is, of course, both ridiculous and unearned. There are many months far more deserving of our hatred.
Take February, for instance. Other than our children being coerced into this nonsensical ritual of wasting limited resources on fluffy red-andwhite mini teddy bears manufactured by three-year-olds in Chinese labour camps, what is Valentine’s really about outside Valentine’s Balls on Brakpan’s Voortrekker Road?
And what of July, October and November, where nothing happens at all? But for some reason, January bears all the brunt of all our self-manufactured issues. This is the month we sign up for 12-month gym contracts we’ll use for exactly four sessions. Our children’s schools will make us buy enough reams of Typek A4 paper to reprint four copies of War and Peace by Easter.
Many cabbage stew recipes jump from inbox to inbox as well.
It’s also the month that’s popularly known as “the month Ndumiso Ngcobo was born” in Illuminati and Bilderberg circles due to my influence on global matters.
One of the most acknowledged January events is the release of the 2023 version of matric results by the governmental accreditation body, Umalusi. Let’s ignore the fact that I believe the term “matric results” is a misnomer. I think they should be called “finding out too late” results.
If there was any semblance of rationale thought and process-driven thinking, the nation would have known about two to three years ago what to expect this year. No child should have been stressing about matric results by last June.
However, we are South African, which is just another way of saying, “excitable, dramatic people in the southernmost tip of Africa not known for their clear thinking”.
I have yet to be exposed to a coherent rationale for why we insist on placing 17-year-olds’ entire immediate futures on a series of three-hour exams over a month. Ignore all the technical arguments for and against this nonsensical system and let’s talk about all the unintended consequences.
This is ignoring the stupid debates about 30% “pass marks” that culminate in being allegedly operated on by surgeons who passed matric biology with 30%.
The only thing standing in the way of me and being a cult leader is my pathological laziness, otherwise I’d probably have my own version of a Vatican City or my own Luthuli House to spend my days playing hide-andseek with the sheriff of the court.
If I headed up a cult, I would spend 90% of all my recruitment budget on 17-year-olds waiting for their matric results. Forget the blind 93-year-old with kidney stones, elevated blood pressure and acute diarrhoea — they don’t pray at even 10% of the levels of the newly converted prayer warriors who wrote matric two months ago.
If I needed new recruits for my cult, I’d look no further than the demographic that’s the ripest for the acceptance of Jesus as one’s Lord, Saviour and heavenly influencer in matters of favourable marks in the senior certificate exams.
And no, while I’m certainly an idiot, I’m not that far gone down Moron Lane to appreciate that prayer after writing exams is no way to cover oneself in intellectual glory.
That said, there might be merit in praying after writing exams because, who knows, prayer works in mysterious ways. Before you know it, an exam marker gets acute dyslexia and a 38% mark is recorded as 83%. Unfortunately, this still doesn’t explain the night vigils ahead of the announcement.
I, too, went through this unnecessary pressure, about 35 years ago. I was deeply in love in the December of my matric year. I was so engrossed in my romantic life I even remember that the first time I experienced a tinge of anxiety about my results was only a few days before the announcement.
Look, I obtained the symbols I got and didn’t think much further than whether I’d satisfied the criteria for acceptance into the programme I wanted to study. Once I was satisfied, I went back to raising funds for the 1988 version of the love of my life to afford a movie date to watch the movie
If I needed new recruits for a cult, I would look no further than the newly converted prayer warriors who wrote matric two months ago
Lambada.
Not everyone who wrote the 2023 national senior certificate exam passed. Very few candidates surpassed their expectations. Only a handful will obtain the results they were hoping for.
If only one candidate who wrote last year’s exam and was disappointed by their results is reading this, please make a mental note: One day you, too, might end up being a 52-year-old bore like me. Believe me, your matric results won’t make or break you. They may delay, negatively impact or even derail your immediate plans.
You’ll be OK.