This week, WASSCE (West African Senior School Certificate Examination) results have been released and I am sure there is anxiety all round. What are my grades? Did I make it…will I make it? What if I don’t pass? Does this mean I am a failure? What if I passed? Better yet, what if I excelled?!
The trepidation of ‘exams season’ pales in significance to the kind one experiences during ‘results season’, I know. Been there, done that!
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As your friends jubilate over their successful results after their end of secondary education national exams, you can’t wait for your parents to come back with the similar news for you. The seconds are counting like hours as you wait impatiently for the good news. You have lost appetite and yet, this is your favourite dish sitting right in front of you behind! You try to watch your favourite series on DStv but you can’t concentrate. Maybe sleep will help, you think but sleep eludes you and you wonder why.
Then you hear the horn at the gate; it’s your parents. They are bringing with them the WAEC scratch card that will grant you online access to see your results. You all are online now looking for your results; and there it is! You did not get the grades you thought you deserved.
You studied so hard and gave off your best during the exams that you feel almost cheated; and now your eyes are stinging with tears. You feel like your world has just crushed and there is no other way out of it. Listen, it’s ok to cry at this point. It’s ok to want to be by yourself for maybe a couple of days.
What is not ok though, is not to pull yourself up from feeling this low. Everyone, including your parents and teachers have all not succeeded at something at the first try. Did you know that:
- Sensational US singer Katy Perry got rejected by three record labels before becoming the success she is today; she is worth roughly US$330 million.
- World famous author K. Rowling had her famous Harry Potter scripts rejected by 12 major book publishing houses initially. Yet, the Harry Potter series would later become a global success with over 400million copies being sold.
- Walt Disney, who created Mickey and Mini Mouse plus an innumerable amount of TV characters and programmes today was rejected 300 times (wow!!!) for his Mickey Mouse and Disneyland concepts. He was also fired from his local newspaper, Star Newspaper, for lacking creativity. Later when he became successful, Disney would purchase this same newspaper.
These are countless people who, in spite of their failures, became successful eventually. There is a tall list of many famously successful people in this world who were either rejected or failed spectacularly at some stage in life.
What options do you have?
- If your results are not strong enough to get you into your preferred tertiary institution, you should re-sit the subjects. WAEC (West African Examinations Council) is accepting re-sit applications now through till next Tuesday November 24, 2020 so go ahead and register now. You just might do way better this time round
- Maybe your grades will not get you your preferred course -you chose medicine, but your grades will get you nursing- and that has you all bothered. Do you know you can still go ahead with the nursing and later pursue what your heart is really set on? You could turn out to become a better trained doctor because of your background in nursing, for instance. The point is, accept whatever course you are offered and keep an open mind; you just might find your true calling where you were not looking.
Whatever you do, do not give up hope yet. Your world has not come to an end just because you did not make it in your exams. We all have failed at something in our lives, and we do learn from that failure in order to become successful. There is no one route to success but what is certain is this: Failure is Success in Progress.
>>>The writer is a passionate educator who makes learning fun for children under 18 through co-curricular programmes. Through her charity organisation, Young Educators Foundation (YEF) in Ghana, the programmes portfolios have expanded to include literacy programmes in local languages as well as public speaking programmes for the youth.
Based on her work in education and with children, Eugenia is the recipient of many nomination and awards such as a presidential award for the contribution to education over the past decade in 2018. In 2019, she was named as one of the 74 individuals in Those who Inspire Ghana, a global programme that identifies nationals whose experiences are worth sharing. Eugenia believes that children are not the ‘future’, but rather the ‘present’ and so the need to invest in their total development. She is a regular contributor on radio and television shows as well as various public fora on this and related topics.
