Growing up my parents were really obsessed with me attending a boarding school.I remember the early years were the hardest for me, I had never been away from my family and I wasn’t really getting along with people.

I cried endlessly.

Time after time I sent messages to my father claiming to be sick and he would rush down to my school which was out of state. He finally told me one day to suck it up and make friends.

I made two friends.

We were pretty close and did everything together, one of us wasn’t so smart so we the “smart ones” used to tutor her.

When it was time for promotional exams we were so scared she was going to fail and not get promoted to the next class.

When the results came out we were not promoted to the next class and she was promoted. The shock.

I remember my mum was so upset she was crying, I was upset too. I didn’t understand what went wrong.

I went to meet teachers and the principal and they all requested that I brought my test scripts which I couldn’t find because nobody keeps test scripts.

The school was basically saying there were some issues with the recording of the test scores for mathematics and if I could produce my original test script it would be rectified.

The most shocking part for me was how nonchalant and unbothered our “promoted” friend was. Turned out she had gone to see the teacher and had her issues rectified without telling us.

She just didn’t care.

I was so mad I wanted to leave the school but my dad wasn’t having it he said he believed I wasn’t a dullard and I could do it over. I repeated the class, wrote my exams kept my scripts this time just in case.

It was mental torture for me I dreaded going back to school and facing people after the holidays.

I was mad at my class teacher for a very long time, she was the brain behind the whole confusion. It was her fault. You don’t mess with people’s lives like that.

Teachers are supposed to be true to what they do, dedicated to help the students not scar them.

I think that was my first major life lesson, I learnt that sometimes things won’t go as planned, sometimes you study well for an exam and life throws you an incompetent teacher who forgets to record test scores. That you’ll fail sometimes not because you didn’t try but because life. That people are people and some friends will stop being that when you fail.