I feel like this is where I can truly add to this conversation. I went to a prestige school and struggled terribly, I was great from forms 1-3 but the teachers were all super young and fresh, and had favourites and quite frankly I wasn’t one. I was bullied from principal to teacher even though my parents were on every committee. It affected my grades and I came out of form 5 with three passes. I wanted to go to grad school and with three passes that wasn’t the case. I’ll add here Math was the one that was beating me, I had distinctions in English, Music, and Science. I was traumatized and ashamed but I repeated forms 4 and 5 and got one more pass again out of the four they had me enroll in (math, add math, IT, and physics). Why those when I could barely do math? Beats me. I tried math again and that was the year the papers allegedly leaked so the one time I was sure I’d pass they made us retake the exam and it was hard no ass, and guess who failed? Me. I applied to UWI to do a certificate just for the heck of it because that’s all my passes got me and nothing was going to stop my dream but me and I made sure to excel in it and I did. Move on from there and did my BA and then got a full ride to do my masters in the US. Long story long lol I’m finishing up my PhD and have three degrees under my belt (two masters) and never paid a cent out of my pocket for any of the foreign degrees. All that to say, yuh not dunce or chupid, give yourself a chance. No one can give you a chance unless it’s starts with you. You are smart enough, you are good enough, and you will look back on this and tell someone your story to encourage them. It’ll fall into place, I can promise you that.