Ticket To My Life

GCE

It was here. The day was finally here. All the preparation, late night reading, tutorials, this was where it all came down to. GCE had commenced. The examination began on the 23rd of November, 2020 but we weren't offering the subjects fixed for the day.

The Arts and some Social science students had Yoruba on Friday, the 27th though. We Science students referred to them as our lab rats for the exam cos we were counting on their reactions to judge whether the exam was difficult or not. We were informed to wear mufti any day we were writing exam as that was the examination body protocol. So they wrote their exam and came out with a neutral expression.

"How was it?" I asked Rasheedah as soon as she entered the classroom.

She shrugged, "Not too bad."

Zainab turned away from her, seeming unsatisfied with her response of course. "What about you, Islamiyyah?"

"It was ok, like any normal exam we write actually." She answered.

"Okay." We nodded.
The fact that they all said the exam wasn't bad did nothing to put my mind at ease. I was under the impression that the exam was easy because Yoruba wasn't a difficult subject to many. That anxiety was still there and it would only leave when I sit for the exam myself.

The next Monday was my first paper; Economics. It has always been easy for me but you never know. The examination body might set the questions to be technical. So Monday arrived quite faster than I wanted it to and before I knew it I was standing outside of the hall waiting to be checked in. As per the examination body ethics, two or three teachers from my school are needed as invigilators to assist the external supervisor sent by the body. We were checked in, given our examination slip and told to look for our seat number among the chairs. The examination was fixed for 9.30 am but the external supervisor arrived late with the excuse of missing his way to the school.

The questions were distributed amongst us with clear instructions not to turn it over. We were answering the theory aspect first. It was written boldly on the back of the paper "EXAMINATION MALPRACTICE IS EVIL. DO NOT PARTICIPATE IN IT."
We were given calculators each by the body which would be used throughout the duration of our exam as they did not allow bringing in of any other scientific calculator apart from theirs. The supervisor instructed us to write our full name, examination number, exam centre name/code in the appropriate spaces provided. Our teachers, being invigilators, walked  around the hall, scrutinizing everyone of us to detect any act of malpractice. I kept rubbing my hands together, pen in hand feeling the tension in the air.

"Start!" The supervisor's voice bellowed throughout the empty hall. This, my good friends, marked the beginning of my first public exam.