Intelligence fail.

I remember the days when I used to be nothing short of less than top of school.
However, these days, this is an unimaginable dream.
Too far to reach and impossible to contemplate.
I am now an average person. My one talent/skill in life, diminished.

I am not going to blame NCEA or anything else for that matter.
I have caused this failure.

My brain can no longer can keep up with the work by not studying.
I have to study to keep up with what the teacher is telling me.
As opposed to when I was 5-13. My brain it seems, has hit its peak.

Therefore I have come to the conclusion that there is nowhere for me to go but down into the depths of failure.

Only thing I can do is to slow this decline down by memorising pages of notes which ceases to be useful when exams are over. Study how to write an answer instead of what to write as an answer.

I cannot think freely anymore and I will put that bit down to NCEA.
I cannot write what I think the answer is in MY words. No, I have to write it down using the government approved sentence structure.

Freedom of speech is one thing but freedom of thought should never be stopped.

As I cannot think freely or confine myself to rote learning, I am stuck on this one-way road to failure.

Exams do not measure intelligence. No. What they do measure is a person's ability to confine themselves to a room and limit their thoughts to do what the government wants. And in that, I fail.

Discussion is not recognised. Although the questions might say "Discuss", what they really want is for you to write down what few sentences you have memorised as a result of one whole year of learning.

One paragraph of memorised sentences to account for one year of learning. One year where I have learned countless things. And to compress all that into a few sentences? Surely that is a disgraceful measure of what you have learned and how intelligent you are.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not saying that I am smart or can get high marks if it were not for NCEA.
What I am saying is that it is an inadequate measure for what a person has accomplished or is capable of.

And to think that many people, all around the world, lose their dream life or careers just because they cannot write down what they know onto paper the way the markers want it, is a horrible thought.

In around 16 months, my schooling would have come to an end. Thus an end, to the happiest part of my life so far. And with it comes the knowledge that my future has been decided by what has been written on around 50 pages of paper.

The brain has been estimated to have around 5 terabytes of storage capacity, to put it in computer terms.
That's 5000 gigabytes for the technologically challenged.

5TB is a heck of a lot more than 50 pages of writing.

Tell me what you think on this.