TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY-NINE DAYS

Most people don’t understand teenagers. They’re seen as blasé about everything and they don’t seem to have any worries.

However, there’s that one worry that affects every privileged teenager: University.

“Pfft,” you, the teenager or parent, say. “University? That’s a long way away! Who would worry about it?” But what if I say, that on your first day of Grade 8 you only have 1000 school days left? Now that’s scary. I’m in Grade 11, so that means my grade has, including the rest of this year and next year, 229 days left of school.

Let me say that again. Two hundred and twenty-nine days left of school.

Two hundred and twenty-nine opportunities to get your marks the way they should be and 229 chances to get better. That’s a lot of stress for someone of 16 or 17, still a child in the eyes of the most veteran of life’s players.

And we are worried. We won’t admit it, we won’t dare admit that we, young adults, are scared but I assure you we are.

Look at the obstacles that we are presented with. Grade 11 is, debatably, one of the most important years in our school career in terms of university acceptance, if not the most important. Our final Grade 11 marks will be of utmost importance when Universities look at our applications. They need to be perfect. So we study. And we study and we study and we work to get the 70s and 80s we know we can get. We work until we speak fluent circle geometry and only then are we ready for our Matric year.

Fish Hoek High School boasted a ninety-nine-point four percent Matric pass rate last year and it is our duty to, not only call it, but raise it. And even if we do, we are confronted by the looming presence of University. A study has shown that at Stellenbosch University and Rhodes University, for example, only one out every five students is accepted. Only one out of five.

You have to work to earn a place in the University of your choice and yet people have the audacity to destroy private property in what is South Africa’s most expensive hissy fit.

Protesters at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal’s Pietermaritzburg campus started throwing faeces at a lecture venue as part of the Fees Must Fall protests on September 27. That is shameful. Primary and High school education is your right, but Tertiary education is a privilege. You are incredibly privileged if you are the one out of five.

And what did you do with that privilege? You threw it at a lecture hall, you burnt it along with books in libraries, you murdered for it.

How are the Matric years of 2016 and 2017 supposed to feel, going into this mess we call our Tertiary educational system? Some protesters threatened and intimidated those who refused to protest. How are we meant to feel safe? How are we meant to feel secure, knowing that some of our class mates, people we could share residences, fields and lectures with, could prevent us from achieving our degree? And do you honestly think that this level of violence will solve anything? If your rent was too high, would you burn down your house to avoid paying it? You preach and roar, saying that your rights are not being respected but yet you infringe on other student’s rights by denying them their education.

I know not everything is about race, but since you’re making it, I have to say this. You say that white people have all the privilege and only education for the black people must be free. How does that make sense? How can you fight racism with more racism? My mother is a white woman and was seen as privileged and my father is a coloured man and was seen as underprivileged. Neither of them went to university because they could not afford it. Did they moan because they couldn’t go? No, they found jobs and attempted to pay their way through life. So how about instead of burning down buildings, you get a job or extra shifts and actually put some effort in. No one is going to listen to your whining. You want something, you work for it. That’s how life works.

I understand that most people cannot afford to pay University fees and there is no shame in that, but to set a building alight is no way an appropriate approach of expressing your frustration.

Two hundred and twenty-nine days to sort it out. Two hundred and twenty-nine days to prepare for the messy world out there. Two hundred and twenty-nine days.

Make them count.