Epic Fail – Jayvir Pillay

It has become customary,l’ve notice of late,to meet those old acquaintances and school chums in my day to day activities,to which the limited passing by conversations have become precedent. The formalities of  “howzit”…”hows things”…”what you been up to” proceed on non-chalantly until that awkward pause,slow exit and then departure. But as certain as death and taxes, I’ve come to expect the enquiry of “what are you studying/doing with your life” which I ‘ve grown to resent.Not that I'm wasting away my blissful ignorance of a youth on meaningless online blogging or not proud of my career path. My consistent response is “Accounting” , to which an even more rudimentary response is that look or utter and sheer boredom and monotonous groan to which the reply is “oh that nice”.

Now I know that as far as mundane and bland occupations go they don’t come as bland or mundane as the accounting profession. Its not all glitz and glamour as the auditing team uncovering Schabir Shaiks off shore accounts will have you believe.

Anyone who has happened to be in my company for a sustained period of time will at some stage have heard how much I hate it and my dwindling regrets at not pursuing the Billy Elliot dream.Yet its something that I’ve come to not only accept but embrace. I wont be so bold as to say I wake up with enough gopher wood to build Noah an ark,over spread sheets and bank recons, but I’ll sleep easy in my 600 thread count sheets.

It makes me wonder though if my fellow school compatriots are as welcoming in acceptance of their career choices and its at this juncture that I have to conclude that whilst many exceptions to the rule can hold true, our education system has failed us...and I jump and jostle my way onto that already full band wagon come mini bus taxi with no qualms.

Lets paint the scene shall we. You beat off every swimmer in the “load” and escape the womb 9 months later.You spend those first cumulative months feeding on an appendage that every man will spend the latter of his life trying to get back to and every woman will use to control every man. You’ll enter the public schooling system around the age your parents stop seeing you as their pride and enjoy and start calculating a tax deductible dependant. This is where you spend the next 12..13..and,making your parents curse contraception ,14 years. Over this time you learn your 3 R’s and take a crash course in the birds and bees lectured by Johnny (who has an older brother) behind the bleachers. Your teachers take off where your parents leave slack and essentially spoon feed that pre-constitutional syllabus to you from text books Eugene Terblance himself used as a play ground soap box.Fast forward to the end of your schooling tenure and your now standing on the street corner with a Daily News at 3 in the morning having just found your name, and with an Umalusi certificate in your back pocket.What now?..its all elementary..only a decision in a career path that will change the rest of your life..no biggie. Is it all coming clear now? Not a Picasso but the unequivocal reality. What preparation if any have our school systems given us in making a decision as paramount as this one? Its with that thought that I have to look back for any sign of lessons learnt or morals instilled.

Throughout my high schooling career and often deep within the warfare that was organic chemistry, you could always have predicted two things; 

• 1 - yours truly being vacated from the premises for some act of disobedience or “smart-ass” remark.
•  2- a question that has been posed by every student at some stage upon their teacher.”When will we ever have to use this ?” 

To which the response was always short and abrasive…”do your work Mr Pillay”

But with some years to my name and on the cusp of entering the working world I have to wonder if we were justified in asking that question so frivolously at every turn.Has so much of what we were forced to regurgitate ever proved useful in the real world? Lets decide shall we;

Biology- Learning the intricacies of the female menstrual cycle has proved pretty useful in avoiding unnecessary abuse…

English- Never a bad thing to learn the mother tongue and whip out a Shakespearean sonnet from across the bar counter..

Science and Chemistry- Bunsen burners are fun…Arsony charges are not..

Afrikaans- Purely to understand the punchlines of Jack Parow’s songs and helpful in planning an early  exit after finding yourself caught in a De La Ray support chorus. I cant tell you how many times a “Go Bokke!”  has diffused an otherwise doomed situation.

Accounting- SARS is reading this…I pay my taxes I swear…

L.O- Always carry spare underwear…cause you never know..

God bless our teachers as we put them in early graves and it would be a miracle if the Mrs Thompsons and Mr Krishna’s of the world aren't found attending weekly sobriety meetings in the neighborhood church every Friday night. But did we ever learn real life lessons? I guess it just wasn’t in there job description.

What now of discipline.Did my formative years of awkward teenage angst at an all boys school put me on the straight and narrow? Did that 2 hour detention for “allegedly” smoking behind the scoreboard really teach me a lesson. The pack of Rothmans red behind my sock draw and the lighter concealed within an old VHS copy of Old School says no. For clarity sake i must reiterate that the status of that accusation for all intensive purposes will remain as “alleged”. As barring any actual video footage and without any substantiative proof,the detention slip simply read;

“found with a lighter and cigarettes”

 (In hindsight that was probably a calling for me to pursue a career in law.)

Having attended the afore mentioned boys school,my college experience can pretty much be summed up into the avid study and pursuance of female anatomy. So any further exploration isn't required. Lessons learned are limited to; contraception is your friend.

If there's one thing you have to admire about we South Africans is that we stick together when it counts.Nothing unites us more than joining the chorus of praise at our own achievements and on the flip side, scrutinizing our failures. Too often a national treasure has turned villain by an unforgiving and fickle public.And debates over the OBE system proceeded its induction somewhat like clockwork.Many of us will recall these 3 letters being whispered in the corridors and emanating from the teacher lounge as we went through the primary motion, but we never really battered an eyelid unless of course it spelt for more work.The ‘007’ matriculating class were fortunate to be able to escape this new system which was being beta tested on the latest crop of students.The Outcomes Based Education system was introduced as a step forward and proposed to focus more on pupil performance assessments and involvement as apposed to the old “teach and regurgitate”. Whilst many have berated the new system (with no matter of manipulation presenting the results of its introduction as an improvement), I cant help but think that when you live in a country that would induct “old shower head” as president, you'll take any glimmer of hope you can get. Anything resembling a step in the right direction. The problem and ultimate failure of the OBE system was as in everything trying to launch off the runway in this country.It was just too idealistic.It assumed that teachers and students were not only equipped enough to integrate with the new system,but that all pupils had access to resources like computers and the Internet. So epic fail there.

But getting back to the matter at hand;What now? If there is anything resembling tangible advice I can give matriculating students as they stand upon the precipice and look out onto the world its this: Your career path will no doubt be the foundation for the rest of how life pans out.This is not to scare you, but it’s a reality. The choices you make will ultimately decide your future. What ever field of study you are considering, research and get as much exposure to it as humanly possible. Come sit in on a 3rd year Financial Accounting lecture on leases using the corridor approach and then tell me how you want to be an accountant because they drive nice cars. Ask anyone who has changed courses after a year into campus and they'll tell you that it just wasn't what they expected. Let me assure you that any perception of what you've heard about a given degree is far from the truth.Which brings me to the usual debate of financial security versus happiness. Putting it bluntly:Screw it.  Ofcourse I implore you to follow your passions and dreams and unicorns and rainbows,but as long as you have conviction in what you wanna do, no one is going to fault you. If you want to make money then by all means go into law or accountancy or engineering.Do medicine,…but know this.…it’s not all Boston Legal and Greys Anatomy out there in the green and blue we call the real world….



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