About two weeks ago on the 29th January, my school held their annual Prize Giving ceremony on a cool Tuesday evening. The purpose of the ceremony was to reward and acknowledge the students who had excelled academically in 2007. I received a number of awards during the evening: a certificate of recognition for my selection as a HIP2B² Brand Ambassador (BA) and four subject awards (or highest average awards) for Mathematics, Science and Art & Culture again, just this time with Economics added to my list.

The final awards were the A-aggregate awards where a list of pupils, per grade, were called on stage to receive a certificate for achieving an 80% average and over for the year 2007. At the end of each list the Top Scholar of the year was read out for each grade. After a particularly long list of grade 9 A-aggregates, I’m pleased to say that I received the award for Top Scholar of my grade, joint with Megan Mina, another one of us BAs.

When it was time to read the list of A-aggregates for grade the 10s of 2007 however, every one was in for a big shock. Just to prepare us for it, the teacher who was calling out the names said something along the lines of, “Now grade tens, don’t let this scare you off but…” Those words never struck me until the A-aggregates had traveled up to the stage, received their certificates and returned to resume their seats. This, remarkably, took no time at all… because there were only TWO!!

What a wake up call for us grade 10s of 2008. If my memory serves me correctly, which it usually does, then the list of grade 9 A-aggregates for 2006 at the prize giving ceremony in 2007 wasn’t that much shorter than our list this year. What ever happened to cause so many of those guys to bomb out, leaving only two standing…?

More freedom, tougher work and stricter assessments, that’s what happened. Just 5 weeks of grade 10 for me have already proven to be a lot more than child’s play. Just to illustrate, last Wednesday all Gr. 10 pupils who took science as a subject had both mathematics and science class tests to write on the same day. In grade 8 and 9, if our science teacher had told us that we were writing a class test on Monday when our Maths teacher had already scheduled our test for the same day, we would just have laughed merrily for a few seconds then, with a straight face, asked our science teacher if she was crazy and to reschedule for a day later. Yup! Those were the good ol’ days. Boy, have things changed!

It’s a tough year ahead for us grade 10s. However, if you were one of those people who managed an A-aggregate in grade 9, why on earth shouldn’t you work to maintain that standard until you graduate from your last year in university? If you work hard enough it can be done!