The joy one gets when hearing the words: "You have passed! You are going to Grade 10!" is hard to explain. You jump up and down, smile the whole day, cry tears of joy. You're excited, but also nervous.

The joy one gets when hearing the words: "You have passed! You are going to Grade 10!" is hard to explain. You jump up and down, smile the whole day, cry tears of joy. You're excited, but also nervous.

It's the start of new friendships, you will be allowed to go out and maybe come back around 10 or 11 at night. What you say to your parents will be taken seriously, so a Grade 10 thinks.

But the reality is, parents still think you're a child whether you are in Grade 10 or not. As a Grade 10 learner you make sacrifices because you want to pass each and every term, you want to know the latest gossip and latest fashion/trends.

You want to attend night parties, you don't want to be unpopular or to be called boring and ugly. You want to have a boyfriend/girlfriend because your friends think it's cool. Every day you're on MXit because you want to know the hip and the not-so-hip.

Due to sleeping late, because of being up last night on MXit, you don't do your physical sciences homework and the next morning you wake up a little later than usual and now you don't want to go to school because you know your physical sciences teacher will shout at you.

You are already stressing. Not only did you not do your physical sciences homework, you also did not do your other homework. You panic. You decide right then and there that you will not go to school. You go to school the next day and you find out that there was more homework. You feel frustrated. You sob in anger. You don't know what to do – only suicide comes to mind.

You read your notes over and over again after school and you somehow understand what's going on. You're still trying to figure out what's what and your friends influence you to log in to MXit and you leave everything and log in.

And the same thing as before happens: you forget all that you were doing until you see it's 6pm and you have to meet your boyfriend/girlfriend. You don't want your boyfriend/girlfriend to lose interest in you and so you go and meet him/her, and you only go back home at about 8.30pm.

Later that evening you try and concentrate on your homework but all those memories you were creating with your boyfriend/girlfriend distract you and you keep on laughing.

Somehow, being a Grade 10 learner is a challenge. If you don't really know how to cope tell your teacher and get help because you want to go to Grade 11.

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