Focus! Focus!

It's my favourite word at the moment, and I'm not just saying it to myself.

I mean it really for the lot of you who are still not out of the Mordor-land called the O levels. This weekend, I was hounded by some anxious people who wanted to know the meaning behind the purple and the yellow forms I had given out.

Really, what would you like to hear from me - that I had a really complicated algorithm behind my selection of which coloured form I gave to whom? If I say I have a secret formula, or that my daughter helped me decide (based on whose names she could pronounce), would you be able to sleep better? Is it important at all?

The really important thing is not what coloured form you got. It is an assessment of how well or badly you have prepared for your mid-year exams, how your studying strategies (if any) have worked, how you have managed your time, how you have pushed yourself, and whether you think you deserve the marks you are going to get. And how in the process of trying to get your As, you have been a helpful, compassionate, understanding and unselfish friend to those around you. You have friends who are not coping very well with the pressure, a classmate who has just lost her father, and compatriots who have to prepare for a national competition in the midst of all that studying. What have you done to help or encourage them? Surely that is a more crucial measure of how you have performed?

* * * * * * * * *

I am saying "Focus" to myself as well because in the midst of having to mark 14 classes of exam scripts, I also have to
- help my daughter with her exam
- write your report cards
- plan your holiday lessons
- do housework

and it didn't help when my daughter came back with a score of 50/100 for her Maths paper.

Sometimes I feel like everything is hanging precariously on a string, and at any one time something will drop. And I just pray it's not my daughter.

We all need to focus on the really important thing in our lives, don't we?