A Total Failure
As humans we must have come to this realization at some point in our lives that the most profound stories are often hidden in the smallest margins
Talking about the ‘dehumanization of excellence’, it seems our work culture doesn’t lie far behind in it. When we focus on the peak, we forget about the climb. When a score becomes the so-called “perfect”, it doesn’t leave room for the messy, beautiful reality of human error, creativity and original thought. Someone who dares to think outside the box is seen as unusual. A 100% as the only benchmark for success leads to mechanical intelligence and superficial performance rather than real happiness and appreciation for one’s own outcomes.
Our society has been nurturing a sensitive issue where a score of 90 or 80 or less is seen as a failure. This has undoubtedly become a beacon for the mental health crisis in majority of the students. With family, teachers and the larger bodies feeding into it, this issue has become so big that it makes one define their whole worth. I have myself felt this disqualification more than a decade ago where a simple ‘three mark divide’ made me an outcast within my own social group. The rest were treated as champions while my 477/500 was worthless. It’s a heavy burden that I have been carrying for a long time where an objective success was turned into a subjective failure by a flawed system. This result meant the world to me and I was so proud of it but I didn’t get the emotional environment to celebrate it. Thus its value was disqualified and I was made to believe only a perfect score matters, nothing else. This became my mark of exile while my friends were heralded as champions ushered into prestigious ceremonies to be draped in public praise leaving me in a hollow silence. The true tragedy of it all was that nobody even noticed that I was drowning in a sea of hopelessness created by the blame that wasn’t even mine to take. Back then this pain was silent. I didn’t have the words to explain my academic burnout nor was anybody ready to listen to what I had to say. I can safely say that I was always the “high- achieving invisible student”.
But today I am going to speak up about this nuisance where this made-up perfect score has been industrialized and normalized to the point of risking one’s overall health. What should be seen as a beautiful sway of the human tendency to fall and rise is only seen as weakness where the only accepted place is the top. The feeling of worthlessness remains constant whether you achieve a 50 or 90% because education has become more of a high-stakes data entry game where humanity is lost at the cost of a decimal point.
We need a radical change - how we define educational success. The 500/500 is not a score; it’s a symptom of a system that has forgotten how to value the soul of a student. This divide needs to be deeply resented and for that we must shift our gaze from the result to the journey of efforts. Remember a child’s worth is not based on the outcome. It lies beyond the numbers they achieve at some specific point in their lives. The celebratory ceremonies need not to be only for the “perfect achievers” as it makes the others feel invisible. It should be for everyone who committed to this effort whole-heartedly. Every student deserves a seat at the table of victory. That’s what education should mean.
I have carried the weight of such a demanding regime for almost 16 years but I don’t want you to do the same. Those marks don’t define who I am today. They are just a snippet of a single day, not a blueprint for our entire lives.
You are a writer, a thinker, a builder and a human being; none of which can ever be measured by a machine or a red pen.
The drink of patience is hard but it eventually quenches the deepest thirst.
Hamna Munir, participant GKSC Bootcamp, is an English Literature post graduate,
