Ms. Dlamini, walking between rows, glanced at Lerato’s paper and smiled ever so slightly.
The paper sat on Ms. Dlamini’s desk, a pristine stack of thirty-four stapled booklets. The front page read, in bold Times New Roman: technology grade 9 term 2 question paper
Thabo, sitting in the third row, stared at the cover sheet as if it were a cryptic puzzle. He had studied. Sort of. He had watched three YouTube videos on gears the night before and had even drawn a pulley system in the margins of his notebook. But now, with the clock ticking toward the invigilator’s command to “turn over your papers,” his mind felt like a clogged drainage pipe—slow and likely to overflow with the wrong things. Dlamini’s desk, a pristine stack of thirty-four stapled
With thirty minutes left, Thabo went back to the questions he’d skipped. He reread the bridge structural member one. Transfer loads. Yes. He filled it in. He checked his gear train diagram and added a label for the idler gear. He counted his marks: if he got half of Section A, half of B, most of C, a few in D, and full marks in E, he might just scrape 55%. A pass. Sort of
“Time’s up. Pens down,” Ms. Dlamini announced.
“Mostly,” Thabo said, grinning.