Ancyent blog26 High school, wrapping up grade 12

 

And so to the last few months of 12^th grade ….

 

I turned 18 towards the end of 12^th grade, which made me eligible to obtain a driver’s license.  The first step was a written exam to get a learner’s license.  As I mentioned in “Ancyent blog24 High school, grades 9 and 10”, unlike in the US one had to be 18 before one could obtain a learner’s license.  There wasn’t any minimum time requirement between obtaining a learner’s license and obtaining a full driver’s license.  I think some of my classmates who had already been driving on farms or surreptitiously on public roads may have obtained their driver’s license on the same day as their learner’s, or at least with a few days.  I had not tried driving previously and wasn’t particularly interested in being able to drive.  But I realized obtaining a license was a necessary evil, so I obtained my learner’s license very soon after turning 18.  My parents then paid for me to have a few lessons through a driving school, including taking the driving test using the driving school’s vehicle.  In between lessons I practiced in my mother’s Ford Escort with one of my parents in the passenger seat.  Much of the practicing with them was on the roads in our neighborhood, on roads that had been built but with no houses yet (see image below).

Roads in Fern Glen.  The roads below the red line were laid down several years before any houses were built there.

Back then almost all cars in South Africa had a manual gearbox (stick shift in American).  I don’t know if one was allowed to do the driving test in an automatic.  I think if one did one’s license was endorsed to say one was licensed to drive only automatics.  A part of the test involved pulling away from a stopped position on a steep hill (of which Port Elizabeth has plenty).  That is trivially easy in an automatic.  A manual requires much more coordination.  For those who don’t know, one has to engage the handbrake, then release it while simultaneously letting out the clutch and pressing the accelerator (gas pedal in American).  Once one is reasonably good at this, one can hold a car stationary on a hill by finding just the right balance between letting out the clutch and pressing the accelerator.

Aside:  Why is it that so many words related to vehicles differ between American and British/Australian/South African English?  Automobile/car, gas/petrol, hood/bonnet, trunk/boot, gas pedal/accelerator, stick shift/manual … .

The driving school’s vehicle was a Volkswagen Beetle with dual controls.  The clutch on the Beetle was very forgiving, making pulling away on a hill reasonably easy.  The clutch on my mother’s Escort was much more sensitive and difficult to master.  My father became very impatient with my struggles to get the feel of the clutch.  Eventually I became fed up with his irritability and told him I would never drive with him in the car again.  I may not have done so until about 20 years later when he and his new second wife, Margie, visited us in Seattle.  My mother was more calm and so I continued to practice with her in the car. 

After a few lessons from the driving school, I took and passed the driving test.  I haven’t been able to find my old driver’s license.  I don’t even recall what it looked like.  It may have been just a piece of paper.  Unlike in the US, one didn’t have to have one’s license on hand when one was driving.

I had a couple more driving lessons when we lived in Seattle.  We didn’t have a car in the 3+ years we were there, but I needed a license to be able to rent a car a few times when we went on vacation and around the time Lisa was born.  The latter was also when my father and Margie visited us.  They were hoping to see the new granddaughter, but Lisa was late and they had to leave on the next leg of their trip before she was born.  Part of the reason for having lessons was to use the driving school’s car for the test.  I learned something that I hadn’t seen before – and that people here in North Carolina don’t seem to know about.  Seattle has many steep hills.  When people park on a hill, they turn their front wheels so that they are again the curb (kerb in British or South African English), as an extra precaution against rolling down the hill. 

As mentioned earlier, to pass matric one had to pass both official languages and in aggregate.  For the aggregate, one’s first/home language was scored out of 400, the other 5 subjects out of 300 and the aggregate percentage obtained by dividing the total by 19.  At Grey, English counted as our first language.  If one took Afrikaans Higher rather than Afrikaans as second language, then the score for Afrikaans was also out of 400.  To pass, the score out of 400 was considered as being out of 300.  In order to pass Afrikaans as second language one had to get at least 120 out of 300 (that is, 40%) but if taking Afrikaans Higher this meant needing at least 120 out of 400 (that is, 30%), making it easier to get a passing grade.  (I ended up with an E, that is, 40-49%, so passed even without that additional help.) 

Some of the books we had to study in Afrikaans Higher were in Dutch rather than Afrikaans.  I presume that was because back then there weren’t sufficient appropriately literary works in Afrikaans.  I had enough difficulty understanding Afrikaans, making Dutch almost indecipherable.  The only book in either Afrikaans or Dutch whose name I remember was a verse drama (in Afrikaans), Germanicus, by N.P. van Wyk Louw, one of the greatest Afrikaner poets of his era.  The book was set in ancient Rome.

I think our edition of Germanicus looked like this.  (Image found on the internet.)

Here are the few textbooks I kept:

Matric math book and the 4-figure tables we had to use to find logs and trig functions, before the days of pocket calculators

Poetry books from regular English class (left) and Literature class (right).

To improve our Afrikaans, everyone in the school, not just those taking Afrikaans Higher, was supposed (or at least strongly encouraged) to subscribe through the school to the weekly magazine “Huisgenoot” (literal translation “Home Companion”).  Our Afrikaans Higher teacher, Mr. Le Roux, was responsible for the distribution of the magazine, so we usually spent at least one of our Afrikaans classes each week doing the distribution.

I think there were just 7 of us who continued with Afrikaans Higher through 12^th grade.  As can be seen in the prize list below, I received the bilingualism prize.  I certainly wasn’t bilingual then, though I am reasonably so now.  But the prize was awarded to the boy who took Afrikaans Higher and managed the best average for the two official languages.  I wasn’t the best at Afrikaans but was substantially better than the other 6 boys in English, giving me the highest average.

As noted earlier, there was a “Speech Night” and prize giving towards the end of each academic year.  It was before the final exams for the year, so the prizes were based on work up to that point in the year.  As can be seen below, along with the prize for bilingualism, I received the prize for math and shared the prize for physical science.  Also, I was the “Std. X Dux” which is roughly the equivalent of the valedictorian at a US high school.  At least it didn’t require me to make a speech.  If so, I would have regarded that as a punishment rather than a reward.  (My brother Mick was also a prize-winner that year, receiving one of the class prizes in “Std. VII”, that is, grade 9.)  The prizes were mostly books – selected from those that the school bought, rather than us being allowed to request specific books.  At least they were nicely bound.

Program for Speech Night (and prize-giving) November, 1972.  My brother Mick is listed in the “Std. VII” prizes.

Two of the prizes I won in 12^th grade, for math and physical science.

Each award had a certificate inside, such as this one.

Because we had to choose our book prizes from those that had already been bought by the school, the choices were rather limited, with it being mostly the binding that made them special. 

Class prizes in lower grades weren’t bound; they had just a dust cover with the school crest.

It rankled somewhat that sporting achievement seemed to be rated higher than academic achievement.  The school had a three-level award system for each sport, with the levels being referred to as “Colours”, “Merit and “Team”.  (“Merit” is now called “Half colours”.)  These are based on the same principles as awarding of a “blue” or “half blue” which originated at Oxford and Cambridge universities.  From Wikipedia: “A blue is an award of sporting colours earned by athletes at some universities and schools for competition at the highest level. The awarding of blues began at Oxford and Cambridge universities in England.  They are now awarded at a number of other British universities and at some universities in Australia and New Zealand.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_(university_sport).

Boys who received “Colours” wore a white blazer on special occasions, rather than the regular school blazer, as seen in the photo below.  For normal everyday occasions they wore the regular blazer but received a yellow star-shaped patch to sew above (or it may have been below) the school crest on the pocket of the blazer.  Those achieving a “Merit” award received a red star and those with a “Team” award a green star (maybe the colors of those last two were the other way around.  The current criteria for the awards for each sport are detailed on the school’s website at  https://www.greyhighschool.com/sports/awards/.  I don’t know if the criteria were quite as formally specified back in the day.

At some time between when my brother Mick reached 12^th grade and when my other brother Ian reached 11^th grade, the school added “Colours” awards for academics, with Ian being awarded academic “Colours” in grades 11 and 12.  Criteria for academic “Colours” are also on the website, at https://www.greyhighschool.com/academics/awards/.  The photo of the 1979 Grey honors board near the end of this post shows Ian’s name in the section “ACADEMIC STD 10” which is a list of those who received academic “Colours”.  The “(Re)” after his name means that it was a re-award, that is, that he received academic “Colours” in 11^th grade too.  Ian is also listed under “PREFECTS”.  Mick and I were not prefects.  Ian had more self-confidence and leadership potential than the other two of us.

I was reasonably close to earning a “Team” award for athletics (that is, track & field).  The requirement for the “Team” award was to be part of the school’s team in the three athletic meets in which the school competed – a dual meet (with Pearson High), a triangular meet as mentioned in “Ancyent blog25 High school, grade 11 and most of 12” (I think the other two schools were Kingswood College and Graeme College, both in what was then called Grahamstown and now is Makhanda), and a meet with many more schools (from the school report it looks like this was called the Hirsch Shield).  I ran in the first two meets, both of which were on our school’s track.  I wasn’t selected for the third one, probably in part because Grey sent a smaller team to what was an away meet in a different city.  Although I played various other sports, I had no chance of earning an award for any of them.  For instance, for rugby one had to be a regular member of the 1^st team to earn a “Team” award whereas, as noted earlier, apart from once making the 3^rd team, I didn’t get beyond being in the 4^th team.  

The boy in the middle in the front row is wearing a “Colours” blazer.  (Photo from the prospectus on the school’s website.)

Every year the Rector produced an annual report for the School Committee (and all the parents of students) on the school’s performance over the course of the year.  Below is the full report for 1972 to show the breadth of activities.

Grey 1972 Annual Report, cover and back page.  The “Business Game” item at the top of the page reminded me that I had been part of the school’s team, though perhaps n 1971 rather than 1972.

Grey 1972 Annual Report, pages 1 and 2.  Most noteworthy is the first paragraph under “Scholastic Achievements” showing that 6 students failed the matric exams at the end of 1971.  Supplementary Examinations were essentially a do-over, written a month or two after the original results were released.

Grey 1972 Annual Report, pages 3 and 4.  Notable here is the range of sporting activities (continued from the previous page).  

Grey 1972 Annual Report, pages 5 and 6.  I am mentioned in a couple of places on page 5, first under “Grey Union” (continued from the previous page) and then under “Science Club).  Several of the people I have mentioned previously, or mention below, are also listed under these two activities – Rodger Meyer, Jeremy Clampett, Neil Solomons, Glyn Williams, Paul Liesching, Colin Steyl, and the two teachers involved, Gordon “Billy Bauer” and Don Gibbon.

Back then South Africa was quite homophobic.  (It may still be, though in 2006 South Africa became the fifth country in the world to legalize marriages between same-sex couples.  I think that was partly through the urging of Nelson Mandela and enlightened religious figures such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu.)  Single-sex schools were probably particularly homophobic.  There was one boy in our class, whose name I am omitting, who some in the class thought was gay.  He was often teased about that.  I don’t know what evidence they had for assuming that.  He probably wasn’t gay – and may have been the first in our class to get married (to a woman).  He was still married to her when I happened to be in the same Facebook group as his wife a few years ago.  It is because she mentioned how long they had been married that I think he was the first to marry.  (That Facebook group has since been archived.)  Of course, just because he married a woman isn’t proof that he wasn’t gay, but that he was still married to her just a few years ago makes it less likely.

Statistically, it is quite likely that some of the boys in our cohort were gay.  However, I wasn’t aware of any and had (and still have) no interest in whether or not any were. (I also wasn’t aware of which of my classmates had girlfriends.  I have always been somewhat of a loner and didn’t go to any teenage parties.)  At the time I didn’t even know that a couple of people I interacted with were gay.  As I mentioned in “Ancyent blog24 High school, grades 9 and 10”, Ron Whitehead, who along with his wife Ann, had looked after us during our parents’ first overseas trip, later came out as gay.  Also, in “Ancyent blog15 Our old neighborhood in PE, part 2” I wrote that when I re-established contact with Anthony Swart, who was a year younger than my brother Mick, lived next door to us back then, and also went to Grey, he told me that he had come out as gay and had been with his partner for 30 years.  Unfortunately, I have lost contact with Antony again.  The only email address I have for him was at the real estate company for which he worked, and both the email address and the company appear to be defunct.

 

When I was in 12^th grade one of the boys at Grey went a little crazy.  We came to school one morning to find that part of the cricket pitch had been dug up and someone had painted a strange slogan in red on the (white) cricket sightscreen.  I couldn’t remember what it was, but an old friend, Roger Gates, said that it was “ZIGALO” and that this may have been followed by something like “was here”.  The culprit turned out to be one of the boys in the school, Steve Beynon.  Roger said that Steve was in the same math class as him.  Before it was known that Steve was the culprit, one of the others in the class, Julian Every (mentioned in “Ancyent blog24 High school, grades 9 and 10”), said loudly that the guy who did that must be made.  Roger went on to say that Steve, not having been caught yet, indignantly refuted that.  The only other thing I remember about Steve was that he was a good soccer player.  Roger said he thinks that Steve passed away in 2024.

 

Some of my classmates were guilty of a couple of pranks on our last few days of grade 12.  (There may have been more than a couple, but these are the only two I knew about at the time and I haven’t seen reports of any others.) 

The day of our Valedictory Assembly (the last assembly of our high school career) started with the Rector’s academic gown having been placed on the weathervane at the top of the school’s clock tower overnight.  During the night a storm blew the gown onto the flagpole, where it was discovered by the Rector on his 6 AM walk around the school.

One of the culprits was Paul Connell, of the Porky deafness tests back in grade 8.  In Paul’s words:

“Stan Edkins had no idea who had done it, so he asked for the culprits to go to his office. We knew he had no idea who had done it, but there is no point in doing it if no-one knows who it was, so Gimme [Grenville Walter of the “hydrogen floor-ide” quip mentioned in “Ancyent blog25 High school, grade 11 and most of 12”] and I traipsed off, passing about 400 pairs of eyes and reveling in our 15 minutes of fame.

“A postscript to the story – at the European reunion last November [in 2011?], the [current] Rector was at our gathering at the Surrey Oval.  (They always come out to our gathering because it coincides with the Autumn Rugby tests in the UK!) and the story was told.  He asked how we got in to his office, and I told him, thinking our method would have long been sorted, but it appears that the technical trick played was still there, 50 years later.”

I’m not sure what the “technical trick” was.  Paul had broken into the Rector’s office on a previous occasion.  The Rector found out about that occasion too and demanded that Paul tell him how he had got in.  Paul told me back then that he hadn’t wanted to give away the real way he had managed to get in.  So he told the Rector he used a method that he (Paul) had heard of but hadn’t tried – that he had cut a credit card-sized piece from a plastic lunchbox and had slipped that into the door at the level of the lock and used the plastic to push the latch bolt back.  The Rector demanded that Paul show how that was done!  So Paul had to demonstrate something he wasn’t sure would work.  Fortunately for him it did.

Paul and Gimme received “six of the best” for that prank, as did Glyn Williams for the next one.  For details of this one I’ll defer to a report written for the school’s alumni magazine 50 years after the event.  I hadn’t been aware of some of the background aspects before reading this.  The final paragraph mentions a “Farewell Lunch”.  I don’t recall there being one.

The Piano Prank

Looking Back with Ian Pringle

THE VALEDICTORY SERVICE OF 1972 AND THE PIANO PRANK

 This incident took place 50 years ago and when this Class of 1972 gathered together this year at the Reunion to celebrate their 50th Anniversary that prank of note was recalled with hilarity and amusement. It was not however an exactly amusing event to some all those years ago and their Valedictory Service was almost scuttled. Charles Marais was Head Boy in that year and it was only through him that Rector Stan Edkins was pacified and the proceedings of the day were completed.

This episode has never been recorded and may now well rank as the iconic schoolboy prank to ever have been played out at Grey and we would like to thank all those involved, including the prankster, for making it possible for its publication. In earlier years it may well have been regarded as being of a sensitive nature but herewith follows the story as written by Charles who recalls vividly the events of that day.

The Valedictory Service in the De Waal Hall at Grey High School in 1972 began like any other and ended equally much the same as most others. It was however what happened in between that set it aside.

Once all were assembled in the Hall, the Rector, Deputy Rector and prefects were on the stage. The Staff and guests were on the balcony, Robert Selley was seated at the piano offset left of the stage. The Grey boys filled the hall seated in their classes facing the stage.

Silence descended, The Rector announced the hymn “Oh God our Help in Ages Past” (prophetic as it may have been for the following half hour) and nodded to [music teacher] Robert Selley to play the opening chord, which he did but instead of playing F# maj what came out was a chord never before invented by Beethoven or Mozart. It was indeed a ghastly sound… Selley looked in disgust at the piano keys and repeated the chord but with the same result…. Selley looked at Edkins and shook his head and with it, his ample silver fringe [bangs in American English] followed suit and he stood up from the piano stool and theatrically reversed from the piano which would have done Liberace proud. Edkins, by this moment, wasted no time, suspecting terrorism, without a word, turned from the lectern and hastily departed the stage.

There was a moment reminiscent of the effects of a stun grenade in the De Waal Hall like all the air was sucked out of that space…..the shock effect was profound… then chaos descended in a crescendo of explosive noise. No longer was anyone concerned with who was going to be announced as prefect or any other items on the agenda for that matter. In that moment of madness, several prefects jumped off the stage to investigate the piano, led by Deputy Head Boy Bernie Going. While they were scrutinizing the disabled instrument a bemused Robert Selley stood a few paces away shaking his head. The noise in the Hall grew to unsustainable levels … Deputy Rector “Mossie” Long was held frozen in suspended animation for no one could blame him it was unimaginable, one of the great ceremonies of The Grey calendar had been upended. Charles Marais the Head Boy jumped up probably more out of instinct than anything else and with some choice undignified shouts of “Shut up” brought the noise to a halt and announced belatedly that what had happened would never happen again at The Grey.

As though that would remedy the situation... closing the gate after the horse had bolted, besides moments of great originality only have to happen once. Steve Marais added extra merriment by taking photos of Charles on the stage and got a death glare for his trouble in recording history.

It was a few more moments before the prefects found the offending reasons why the piano had been deactivated. A few pieces of scotch tape had been placed across the short vertical part of the piano keys sticking the keys together…completely invisible. Genius in its simplicity. Bernard motioned to Charles that all was sorted. The prefects returned to the stage and Robert Selley to his stool at the piano, although tentatively. Charles Marais then quietly asked Bernard Going to hold the fort while he went out to invite Mr Edkins to return…and with a similar announcement to the school body he left the hall.

Out in the Quad Charles saw the Rector pacing away with his gown blowing out behind him, going away from the hall and War Memorial. Charles caught up with the Rector who was clearly distraught. Charles told the Rector that Bernard Going and the prefects had located the problem and that all was normal again and that he could return to the hall. The Rector stated that he was unable to speak and could not return. Charles implored him to return stating that the Matrics of 1972 could not leave school before the Valedictory Service was completed, it was a right [sic] of passage, and besides the new prefects still had to be announced. The Rector was not ready yet so Charles then took his hymn book from his pocket and handed it to Edkins suggesting that the Rector read from it until his voice returned to normal again. So the two of them went round and round the quad …the Rector reading and Charles listening until Charles could confirm that the great man’s voice had settled down. After about three rounds of the quad, they reentered the hall. The Rector in front was followed by Charles who then took his seat. You could hear a pin drop. When Rector Edkins reached the lectern he looked out over a sea of faces each wondering what would happen next…and for Edkins that must have been a difficult moment knowing that the perpetrators were in the audience staring up at him. The Rector then said, “The boy responsible for this abomination will leave the hall and wait for me in the office.”

After quite a few loaded moments, there was the sound of a chair moving and Glyn Williams got up slowly and turned and slowly walked, head down, and exited the silent hall at the back. The Rector then made the announcement of the hymn, nodded to Robert Selley to play the opening chord which Selley did and the Valedictory went ahead as normal as though nothing had just happened a few minutes previously. The order had returned.

Glyn Williams – The Piano Man is now an attorney in Cape Town and has regularly attended his reunions over the years. We asked him what took place when he owned up and after he left the hall? He replied that a highly upset Rector Edkins confronted him and told him to leave the school immediately! Glyn duly obliged and he then spent the next two hours wandering about Mill Park before he decided to call on the Rector. He duly apologized, took his punishment like a man and was banned from attending the Farewell Lunch but allowed to sit and write his final examinations. With that Glyn became a Grey legend!

 

The last paragraph of the above article mentions writing final examinations.  The Valedictory Assembly was on our last regular day of high school.  After that we had to return for our final examinations.  We came in just on the days we had an examination and only for the duration of the examination, which we wrote in the De Waal Hall.  We still had to wear our school uniforms on those occasions.  For the examinations the desks were spaced widely apart, and we may also have been assigned seats at random, to try to prevent cheating.  The invigilators (“proctors” in the US) were independent of the school, rather than any of our teachers.  I presume that was to prevent teachers providing hints.  Each school tries to get the best results it can, so that it can boast about them.  Having independent invigilators reduces the risk of schools “cheating” which I am sure must have happened in some places.

Cover of the program for the Valedictory Assembly.

Order of the Valedictory Assembly service.

Also in the program was this listing of all of those in 12^th grade in 1972.  The (B) next to some names indicates they were in the boarding house.  I don’t know why that was important enough to include here.

The program also had a photo of all of us.  (This is the same photo as in “Ancyent blog25 High school, grade 11 and most of 12”.)

The matric exam period was spread over at least a couple of weeks in late November and early December.  The exams were all graded centrally, rather than at our school.  This took a few more weeks.  A list of those who had passed was distributed to local newspapers.  In Port Elizabeth this was the Eastern Province Herald.  Copies of the issue with the results could be purchased from just after midnight on the day the results were allowed to be reported.  Many kids gathered outside the E.P. Herald building to purchase a copy of the paper as soon as it came off the press.  To the at least mild amusement of my parents, I was not one of the many, preferring to be asleep at that time.  In mitigation, I was reasonably certain that I had passed, though maybe a little concerned about Afrikaans – as noted earlier, we had to pass both official languages in order to pass overall.  I was more interested in what my overall aggregate was.  That was not reported in the newspaper – just a list of who had passed at each school in the area.

Full results were mailed at about the same time, arriving a few days after the newspaper listing who had passed.  As can be seen below, my overall aggregate (“Grand Total”) was a B (70-79%).  Despite being one of the top schools in the country, no-one at Grey achieved an overall A aggregate that year.  I was rather disappointed to receive just a D for Literature (though happy to receive an E for Afrikaans Higher”).  If I had taken geography rather than literature (or Latin), perhaps I would have managed an A aggregate.

My official matric exam results.

My official matric certificate.

When I visited the school in 2019 I found that my name had been added to a couple of honors board.  I don’t know what the “(CROLL)” after my name and the next two means.  I presume it has something to do with us being the top 3 students because we are the only ones out of alphabetical order.  The “FIRST XV” refers to the 1^st rugby team (there are more than 15 players, so I presume there was a number of games one had to have played to qualify).  The “FIRST XI” refers to the first cricket team.  I don’t know why there are fewer names for the other sports, such as just 3 names for (field) hockey.  In the one for my brother Mick’s 12^th grade year, some of the sports have “COLOURS” before the name of the sport.  As noted earlier in this post, there were three levels of awards for each sport, with specific standards required for each.  The top level is “Colours”, the next is “Half Colours” (which was called “Merit” back then) and the third is ‘Teams”.

 

Grey honors board for 1972.  (The sun was shining through a window and although I tried various angles, this was the best shot I was able to get.)

Grey attendance at National Youth Science Week honors board.  Although I did well enough to attend in 11^th grade, neither I nor anyone else at Grey made it in 1972. 

Grey honors board for 1975.  My brother Mick made the honors board in his 12^th grade year.

Grey honors board for 1979.  My brother Ian also made the honors board in his 12^th grade year, in his case not only for his academic performance but also as a prefect.

So ended my time in high school.  Unlike many of my peers (and my brother Mick), I was sad that my high school days were behind me.  Apart from a few annoyances, such as cadets, I had felt comfortable in that environment.  I wasn’t in a hurry to move on to the next stage of my life which, after a summer break of about three months, involved heading off to university.

Final report, giving not only academic standing but also a list of extra-mural and other activities.

Above is my final report from high school, somewhat like a letter of reference.  Although this is dated February 1973, which is after the external matric exam results were released, it was based on the last internal exams, at the end of the third term, rather than the external matric exams.  I didn’t do anything to try to make myself look good on this report.  Unlike here in the US, at least back then applications to universities in South Africa depended primarily, if not entirely, on final grades from the common external exams.  One didn’t even have to write an essay as part of the application.  I applied to just one university – the University of Cape Town (UCT), the alma mater of both my parents.  There is a university in Port Elizabeth, at the time called the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE) and later rebranded as the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.  UPE was dual medium (English and Afrikaans), with courses in some departments being taught in English and in other departments in Afrikaans.  Math was one of the latter.  My Afrikaans still being very poor at that stage was a secondary reason for not applying to UPE.  My parents used to refer disparagingly to UPE and some of the Afrikaans-medium universities as “tribal colleges” with Afrikaners being the “tribe” in this case.  That was probably partly snobbishness and partly because of perceived lower standards, or at least they didn’t have the same level of international recognition as UCT and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits, which my brother Ian eventually attended).

I didn’t know what I wanted to do in life, though going to university seemed to be a good way to postpone having to join the real world.  According to an item on page 2 of the Grey High 1972 annual report, the school had a School Counsellor, Mr. J. van Zyl, who supposedly gave career information (as well as providing help with study methods and guidance with personal problems).  Maybe I didn’t know (or was too shy to ask) but I did not receive any kind of career guidance.

After high school most of my peers did their compulsory national (military) service.  Some of those of us received a deferral to go to university first.  That had both positive and negative consequences.  The biggest negative is that those who did national service in 1973 (directly after we finished high school) had to serve just 9-11 months whereas for those who went to university first the requirement had increased to 2 years by the time we did ours.  On the positive side, those of us who obtained qualifications that were at least of some use to the military served in ways that gave us an opportunity to gain practical experience, as well as avoiding being on the front lines.  I ended up being an officer in the South African Navy, where I captained a desk, working as an operations research analyst.  The experience I gained there benefitted me when I had to get my first real job, as I will explain in a (much) later episode.  (My brother Mick qualified as a social worker and served in that capacity, but part of that involved being at or near the front lines, including going into Angola, even though officially South African troops did not set foot in Angola.  Mick hasn’t been willing to say anything about his time on the front lines, other than to say he declared as many people as possible as being unfit for combat duties.)