Pride Goes Before Destruction ~ Creative Nonfiction #37

Oladimeji Ajegbile

If any one had told me that I would find myself in the management science, I would have fought that person tooth and nail. Taking some bold steps in making a career for myself is what I wanted to do. I did take the bold step but my heart withdrew. In my school days, it was mandatory to choose your department of choice after an aptitude test had been carried out. It was my wish to be in the medical field, so the best place for me was to be a science student.

From the aptitude test that I wrote, I was meant to be in science class and the minor outcome of the tests was arts. I stick with the outcome and joined the sconce class on the first day of school. From the look of the set of students that resumed in the science classes, it appeared that we were stereotype. They were the best students in the school. The rhetoric that science students were always the best had crowded my thoughts, how wrong I was.

Good morning students.

Mr. Ojo, our physics teacher, greeted us upon entering the class. We all rose to return the greeting.

Good morning sir, we're pleased to meet you.
The teacher took a few minutes to address us before going to the topic of the day. He started with acceleration. Throughout the class, I was lost. All that the teacher said seemed to be a foreign language. I knew at once I wasn't meant to be there.

On the first day, through my experience with physics, I found my way to the commercial class. There, I found love. Love for business subjects and the humanities.

Throughout the first two years in the commercial class, I was among the top five best students. So, I thought I had arrived. With my level of comprehension in class, I convinced my parents to register me for GCE. Most of my classmates had registers and among them were those whom I thought I was better off.

I sat for the GCE examination. That was an entirely different story and it would be for another day. When I completed the examination, I resumed back to school with my shoulders high. Like my other classmates who had also gone to write the same examination, I became nonchalant about class activities with the hope that the GCE results would be colourful.

The results were eventually released. Seeing the outcome was far more than slicing onions in the kitchen. I had seven ordinary passes, one failed subject and one canceled. It was then I knew that I was in for a huge task. I wanted to be the best version of myself. All along, I have lost focus. Now I know.

Pavel Danilyuk

Several options were opened to me but I chose to take on three art subjects and dropped accounting. I was determined now, having seen the outcome of the GCE examination that took the best part of me. I bought history and government textbooks and read them twice before the final senior school certificate examination approached. I think that made the difference.

I wrote the senior school certificate examination and I had a distinction in each of the art subjects that I took in the final class. That result came with a price and that price was that I cut from activities that are liable to cause a distraction. Some of my friends had to go too. The one thing that I am glad I did was to make those moves I made. If I had not taken those commercial subjects, I probably would have re-sit for another senior school certificate examination. I am glad that was the case, the commercial subject made the difference.