Daisies in Darling and other Distractions

It was a week or two before the matric exams started in 2007.  Westerford were having their final pep talk with the parents and the matric class of that year.  Advice was flowing freely to us parents – many of whom were writing matric again for the first time since our own personal experience many years before.  Deputy Principal John Broster had it spot on.

‘Since February we have been calming your daughters down,’ he said. ‘We continually have to remind them that the exams are seven months away and there is no need to panic. However, I now have an announcement to make to the boys –  the Education Department have decided to set exams for all matriculants and these start in two weeks….’

As the matric exam season approaches us at full speed, I feel like making a similar observation to some of our boys here at school. They all seem to have different ways of coping with this breaking news.  The predominant emotion seems to be one of nonchalance – under no circumstances must they be seen by their mates as breaking a sweat for something as minor as matric exams.  They have mastered the art of casual indifference and feigned deafness when they hear adult injunctions about these exams being their springboard for the future, the grand finale after twelve years of schooling, the culmination of twelve thousand hours of sitting in a classroom and, for a much smaller minority, the thankful conclusion of a similar number of hours doing homework and revision.

I found one of our matrics sitting under a tree recently after school one day working at some involved mathematical formula.

‘And now?’  I enquired, impressed that we were getting the message through to at least one boy about the academic importance of this time of the year.

‘I am working at how often I have heard a school bell ring in my time,’ he said, clearly engrossed by the enormity of his self-imposed task.  He was patently disappointed that we had done away with bells some years ago as that precluded him from breaking the five figure barrier.

I moved on back to my office but not before I heard another group discussing the flora of the Western Cape.  It seemed to me that the group was keen to see the spring daisies in the Darling area.

Rocking the Daisies: Cloof Wine Estate, Darling - Western Cape; photo courtesy Daniel van Hoff (Matric 2014)

Wynberg Matrics 2014: on a "floral excursion"
a fortnight before final exams commence.
Photo courtesy Daniel van Hoff (left)

There are some traits of boys which have never changed over the years.  The first is that if you keep putting off something for long enough, the problem will invariably go away. This goes back to pre-teen days where if you would leave your bed for any length of time, you could come back to find it made.  In years to come, mothers would come to regret these caring actions when they complain to me that their son never seems to take responsibility but ‘just waits for something to happen’.

Another trait of boys is that if he says something often enough, he starts believing it to be true. While he normally finds it somewhat easier to convince his mother, convincing his father is a much more daunting task. Fathers tend to have distant, uneasy memories of similar despairing attempts to convince their parents that they were putting in hours of honest academic toil.

I recollect having a conversation with Dennis Bowditch in the cricket nets many years ago.  He was a talented all-rounder in the early Jacques Kallis years.  It was a few days before a matric Biology paper and, standing at the end of his run-up, I asked him how his revision programme was going.

‘I have it all worked out,’ he said. ‘I put my Biology book under my pillow at night and let the information waft into my head while I am sleeping….’

He then took off on his run-up leaving me speechless.

To this day, I have never found out whether he was serious or not.

The third trait of a teenage boy in exam time is to irritate his mother.  During the school holidays before matric, one boy once told me that when his mother would leave the house, he would spend the time doing productive work. On hearing the car in the drive, he would turn up the music (loudly) and hop on his bed and close his eyes.  There he would lie, waiting for the inevitable explosion which would only be exacerbated by his plaintive comment that ‘he was only taking a short break!’  He even persuaded his younger brother to join the subterfuge and to back up his machinations by saying that he had been on his bed all day.

He attained an A aggregate when the final results were released.  I wonder whether that mollified his mother as she counted another crop of increasing grey hairs?

Desks ready for Matric Exams

I often speculate whether another Wynberg matric boy was having me on some years back with an incident before the boys started writing.  The entire class was seated quietly in the hall waiting for the exam papers to be placed on their desks.  Suddenly he rose and walked to the next desk and started talking. I was not amused. I reminded him that it was a public exam and once they walked into the hall, there was no talking or communicating whatsoever.

He endeavoured to placate me.  ‘Don’t worry, Sir.  I was just checking what exam we were writing today.’

Even for me, who frequently asserts that he understands boys, that was an astounding statement.  Clearly he was not having me on, as his name did not appear in the newspapers when they released the results some time later.

It certainly has given grist to the mill in my ongoing discussions with Shirley Harding, Principal of WGHS, that Heads of boys’ schools should be paid more than other principals.  Where other than in a boys’ school would a pupil ask a question like that on the morning of an exam?

Lack of preparation often causes internal panic and boys can react in interesting ways.  One year, a boy came into the exam and after taking off his blazer, placed it over the back of his chair.  He then took out his pencil case and set out his writing implements neatly.  He sat down and after a while, before the papers were handed out, asked to go to the bathroom.

We did not find him until the following day when his grandmother phoned from Johannesburg to enquire whether or not he should be at school.  It turned out that he had cycled to Wynberg station, locked his bike there, caught a train to Cape Town, picked up the airport bus and then flown to Johannesburg.

His name also failed to appear in the newspapers that year.

Another incident which I doubt would happen in a girls’ school and proved that I do earn my remuneration, was when I was phoned by a distraught mother on the morning of an exam saying that her son was refusing to come to school. 

I arrived to find the boy in full uniform hiding under his mother’s car in his Tokai driveway.  No amount of encouragement or conciliatory words from me would persuade the boy to come out from underneath the car.  Eventually I decided that enough was enough.  While his mother distracted him on one side, I grabbed his one leg and bracing myself against the back wheel, and tugged.  Inch by inch, a tear-stained face and filthy uniform reluctantly emerged.

I frog-marched the oil-stained and dishevelled boy into the exam room.  The chief invigilator raised a quizzical eye at the sight.  ‘Don’t ask,’ I said. ‘Just give him an exam paper.’

His name DID appear in the newspaper and he subsequently enjoyed a fine university career.  To my knowledge, he did not cause the vice-chancellor of UCT to scramble underneath cars.

It is really one of life’s ironies that boys have to write the most important exams of their lives when the cornucopia of life’s pleasures are opening up for them:  driving licences, legality in pubs and clubs, beautiful summer beach weather. When Ray Connellan was the Grade Head of the Matrics, he used to say the same thing over and over again:  ‘For two months just concentrate on your academics.  You have the rest of your life to enjoy the distractions.’

That comment, in fact, sums up the dilemma facing everyone who has the challenge of exams ahead of them.  The ability to defer gratification is one of the key factors of successful people. 

Self Control Rewarded

Fifty years ago, Columbia University put hundreds of six year olds through the marshmallow test.   They sat them down individually in a room and gave them a marshmallow on a plate.  They were told that if they waited fifteen minutes, they would receive another one.  About a quarter of the six year olds, waited for a greater reward.

The University then tracked these children through school, university and their careers.  They found that those who had exercised self-control in that early test, performed far better later in their studies and in social situations.

I am relieved that I was never put under that pressure.  Wine, women and song at 18 was one thing – but a marshmallow to a six year old!  I could never have resisted that one.

I was always a sucker for marshmallows.