This is my perfect opportunity to vent about my life the last few months. Wait is that right? No let me rewind that. This is my chance to vent about my family and my entire school carrier.

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I am 21 and in University. I come from a family of a total of 21 siblings, 5 being from my mother with myself included. My family has no tolerance for weakness and disappointment and as much as they push you to strive to be better and successful in life, they stress the living shit out of you.

I get it, they just want what’s best for me. But do you understand the stress and tiredness of someone who has been schooling their entire life without as much as a break for 3 months. Yh you heard that right. In my country(Ghana) the educational system is divided into 4 levels. Primary school is 6 classes so takes 6 years. Then you move to Junior High school, which is 3 years, the. Senior High School also 3 years and then finally University or college for a Degree in 4 years. Add everything together, and you get 16 years. 16 fucking years of schooling non-stop. Well almost non-stop because I actually have had a month or two or holidays but that was as much as I got.

Primary School Chapter

On a normal, after you graduate from primary school, you’re supposed to have a break for a month or two before you start Junior High School. I’ve always been a bright student. Maybe not anymore because my results from last semester disagrees. Point is, I’m smart and I do well in school. Because of this, my family has made me skip several classes of the educational system and written most exam before I was supposed to be ready. I passed regardless because like I said, I’m book-smart.

In my primary school years, my well-meaning family convinced my school’s Headmistress (We call Principals Headmaster or Headmistress around here) to promote me one class ahead ( I went from primary 3 to Primary 5 so I basically skipped primary 4) of my friends who I started schooling with. So essentially, I skipped 2 classes in primary school. “Well you said you were promoted one class ahead so what do you mean by you skipped 2 classes”?

In Primary 6(which is your final year primary school) you write an exam called “Entrance Exam” to proceed into Junior High School. Instead of taking this exam in primary 6, I took it a year earlier when I was in primary 5 and hey, I passed again so I went to Junior High School. At this point I should tell you that Junior High School is JHS in short(that’s actually what it’s called and not just me making a name cos my fingers are getting tired).

Junior High School Chapter

My next cheating the educational system act was in JHS. I told you already that is just 3 years. My family had other plans. When I was in JHS 2( second year of Junior High School), my brothers told me they wanted me to take the Basic Education Certificate Examination, BECE(this is the final exam to move to the next level from JHS) to test whether I would be ready for it in my final year in JHS. You guessed it, I took it…and I passed.

Fast forward 2 months later when our results were released, my family didn’t say anything about me going to SHS with my results so naive me, thought “oh hey, I get to finish my last year in JHS with my friends”. WRONG!

After BECE results are released, the Ghana Education Service GES, takes a month or so to place you into Senior High schools you selected prior to writing the exam. That is of course based on whether you passed and how well you passed. What I didn’t know was that my brothers had worked out the “paperwork” if you’d like to get me into SHS without my knowing. I came back from school(JHS) one Friday day and they took me shopping for stuff I would be using to SHS because I was going to be reporting to SHS on Monday. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to my friends who I was leaving behind in JHS. But that’s not the stressful part.

After you write BECE, you’re supposed to rest 3 months or so before you go to SHS. This is what is expected is expected for final year students. But remember I wasn’t a final year student when I wrote BECE so I took my ass back to school and kept living my JHS 2 life until the results were out and I was made to report to SHS. That means again, I skipped a period of rest in the educational system once again, just this time, a longer one. 3 months worth of rest. Denied.

Senior High School(SHS) Chapter

_{This was me in Senior High School. Graduated at 17.}
My Senior High School was a little different. I was made to attend extra classes from my first year to the end. Even during holidays when everyone was home enjoying the holidays. I would ride my bike across very long distances to where the tuition was happening.

_{This was me on my friends bike on the way to one extra class session. Don’t laugh at the pose. That was classy back then. At least I thought it was.😅}
In my Senior High School I didn’t skip any levels. Yh that’s a surprise for even me. I still wrote another Final year exam, the West African Senior School Certificate Examination(WASSCE), in SHS 2(second year SHS). I passed yet another time. This is why I’m surprised I didn’t take that results to to University because that was entirely possible. But then again maybe I’m not so surprised.

My family wanted me to do Medicine in University but my results wasn’t good enough to be admitted into medical school. Medical school in Ghana requires a grade 6-9 but I had 18 when I wrote WASSCE in my second year. This wasn’t a bad grade. Could get you into normal schools like nursing, teaching, Medical Laboratory, Biochemistry others, just not the likes of medicine and Engineering. So this time I finished my entire 3 years of SHS with the hope that my grades in my final year exam will be good enough for Medicine. Final year and my grades didn’t meet expectations. I scored 19 this time. This was a lower performance than what I did in SHS 2. Basically the lower the grade, the better. Grade 6 is the lowest and the best.

University Chapter

With Grade 19, I was admitted into University for Development Studies, UDS in Ghana to read Biochemistry in 2018. This is currently where I am and will be graduating with a Bsc Biochemistry Certificate in 2 months times. My family has very high expectations of me because they’ve always considered me smart. But University is nothing like primary, JHS and SHS. My courses are complex now, I am dating, I’m older and have tons of other shit to deal with besides school.

A lot of things take up my time now and my family doesn’t seem to understand this. In my opinion, a B is not a bad grade but my family thinks otherwise. This makes me fear for what is come in 2 months at my graduation event. They’re going to come there expecting me to most likely be graduating with 4.5-5.0 GPA. This is called First Class Honors in Ghana and is very respected. I know myself and I’ve seen my results over the years. I’m not going to be a first class student. My grades are not bad, just won’t be as good as my family wants them to be.

_{This is from last year, my third year university.}

_{These are from last week}

Everything about my educational career plus pressure from my family is stressing me the fuck out so yeah, I’ve taken a big bite of the stress cake. Stressed is what I’ve felt almost my entire 21 years of life. This is what stress is to me. 21 years of no good rest. I mean I did make it this far in the education ladder so I guess the stress payed off. It is just too much.

I’ll post an update in 2 months of my graduation event when it’s here. I hope things go well. I feel like I’ve dumped so much information on you that you probably won’t be able to properly process everything I’ve said. Would be easier to understand for someone from Ghana. But if you did understand regardless without being a Ghanaian, good job, really. I don’t think I would have. But I guess you did because you wouldn’t stick around this long if you didn’t understand what you were reading. I know I wouldn’t lol.