When I took my SLC exams, Ram Sharan Mahat was the Finance Minister of Nepal. And decades later, Mahat is still hanging out in the Finance Ministry. I wish all of us had the same luck as Mahat Uncle.
Six months before the SLC exams, I joined a tuition class. The teacher was a vice principal at a local school and it was believed that anybody who joined his tuition class passed the math exams with flying colors. I had always been weak in math.
The teacher wore dark specs. The tuition class was held in his living room, big enough to fit four people at one tiny desk. We didn't have microbuses then but I guess the art of squeezing in has certainly prepared us to fit inside such buses now. The room was dark but the guru with the dark glasses could see pretty well while all of us had a hard time figuring out what we were writing in our notebooks.
The tuition class ran for an hour. But I always showed up late because I couldn't miss the local football match in my neighborhood every evening. The venue where the match was held now has a dozen houses. Kids don't play out in the open these days. They have iPads.
Our tuition guru always made me go to the local paan shop to buy him a jarda paan. I guess that was my punishment for showing up late. I used to buy a meetha paan for myself. By the time I headed back to the tuition class, it was almost over. And I had no choice but to copy the answers from my friends even though I never figured out how to solve them.
After a few months of buying paan, I quit the tuition class because my football match was more important than figuring out how to solve all the theorems. A month before the SLC exams, I decided to host my friends at my house for our nightly crash study. But instead of studying, we spent hours talking about girls and mostly Hollywood actresses. We listened to songs and danced. After a month of midnight snacks and guff-gaffs, it was time to sit for the SLC exams.
Rajesh Hamal was just beginning his Kollywood career then. Our SLC gang of five celebrated the completion of our first exam by heading straight to Ranjana Cinema Hall. Well, we had some sodas and momos before watching a Rajesh Hamal movie. The next day's paper was English and we felt that we need not have to do a final revision because we were confident of passing it. Well, it helps like it still does when you attend an English-medium school. Nepali seems to be toughest subject for all of the English-medium kids even today.
Let us all hope that all the SLC candidates will pass with flying colors. But of course, the reality is different. More than half of the candidates fail the SLC each year.
Our government has done a miserable job in educating the kids in public school. The government teachers get paid well. Some of them don't show up for work and they still get paid. Many government teachers in rural areas don't even take any classes but have time to play cards and drink local moonshine during school hours and they still get paid.
Well, not all of our government teachers are bad. But most of them are engaged in political activities rather than teaching the kids. I think our government teachers should be paid according to the SLC pass rate. If only 20% of the students from a school pass the SLC, then the teachers should be provided only 20% of their salary. And what if you have a 100% passing rate? Then give them bonuses. But, of course, our government teachers don't care. Nobody is going to fire them for not doing their job.
Well, my SLC exams were over. The results of the SLC exams don't take much time nowadays. But in my time, we had to wait for more than six months. To pass our time, we took computer classes at computer training institutes. Typing MS-DOS commands and writing stories in Word Perfect made you feel like you were smarter than Bill Gates.
The SLC results were out. My parents thought I would fail. I somehow managed to barely pass in First Division. Only two of us in the neighborhood had First Division grades. The other guy is now a psychiatrist in one of the top hospitals of the country. And I'm hoping to seek his services to resolve my identity crisis.
Some of my friends failed the SLC exams. The guy who got only 10 in maths is now an economist. He managed to pass it the second time and went on to do his Masters from a prestigious university in the West. The other so-called failure went on to finish his MBA from India and now works for a multinational company in Mumbai.
The moral of the story is SLC isn't everything. No, it's not the Iron Gate. It's just the beginning of a long academic journey. SLC is like hiking to Fulchowki. There are more mountains to climb.
So for those who will pass the SLC exams this year, I hope you'll continue to pursue further education and excel. For those who fail, don't lose hope. Try again. And those who think that they aren't good at academics, please take a vocational training and use your skills. Not all of us have to be doctors. Even doctors need plumbers and electricians. And they charge more than a person who has an MD. So go figure!
kalumaila99@gmail.com
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