Successful

At the end of the afternoon, after a long day of waiting and counting and hoping, Dunya's phone rings. In the past half hour, all apps have been trickling in from classmates who have succeeded. She picks up quickly. “Last on the list,” her mentor says cheerfully and the tone reassures me. If she had failed, she would have sounded different. “You are very successful!” the lecturer shouts. I have tears in my eyes of relief. It was exciting. Of course, it always is, but we weren't convinced it had worked. Learning wasn't possible, she couldn't keep her head around, couldn't burn forward, and when she had her book open, what she read didn't stick. Summaries didn't help, she said, so she didn't get started. And the courage fell in my shoes when she came home crying after Economy. The exam was very difficult and she didn't like it for a while.

n terms

As good and bad as it went, we tried to calculate her numbers, but that's still a gamble. The n-terms, which tell how rigorously the exams are assessed, are only known on the day of the exam result. Plus, you don't know exactly how open questions are read. Is your answer what they mean or is it slightly different? If you get 38 for Economics and 5 for Mathematics, then there are sevens and sixes and you will get a pass. Given the number of complaints that have come to the LAKS about these exams, it is expected that the n-term will be high. But of course, you can never be sure. In short, the uncertainty was debilitating, because it took weeks before we knew where she stood. I was distracted at work, but Dunya mostly sat at home and was also barely motivated to do anything. ADD is a Bitch!