i think that was the motto of my high school education. in Trinidad we follow the English school system, that is seven years of primary or elementary education, then an entrance exam to get attempt to get into the high school of your choice. there is automatic placement into government run high schools depending on your scores but the parochial schools are believed to have a better quality of education.
apparently i was a brilliant primary school student, everyone expected the world of me, so they pushed me. they streamed me through my last two years of school to get in line for taking the exam; back then it was called Common Entrance, now it`s call the Secondary Evaluation Assessment or some such tripe. i sat the exam a year earlier than i was supposed to and aced it; scored in the top 97% of students in the country and was on my way to St. Mary`s College, one of the top schools in the country. St. Mary`s College or CIC as it was called, is a catholic boys high school.
i think i started resting on my laurel at the orientation session. it`s not to tell a roomful of 11 – 13 year old boys that they are the best and the brightest in the country, whatever semblance of humility there was in those little ego maniacs goes right out the window. or maybe that was just me.
i spent the mandatory five years on cruise control, getting by on natural intelligence. my ego got the better of me at the end of my third year; when you chose the subjects that you want to do for the rest of your school career; i dropped computer science, because i didn`t think they could teach me anything i didn`t already know, i was an idiot.
at the end of the five year stint, there is an series of exams, like the ordinary wizarding level exams in Harry Potter. my subjects of choice were French, Spanish, Caribbean History, Geography, English Literature and the mandatory English Language and Math. i just managed to scrape passing grades for everything except Spanish which i failed spectacularly and the English subjects which i passed as spectacularly as i had failed Spanish.
there was a point to this post somewhere but it`s seemed to have escaped me, i may come back and clean it up later.
