When I did my first degree in the turn of the century, I missed out on a 2:1 by just a mere three points. The reason being, one of my first year courses was to be considered in my final year scoring. Unfortunately, my lecturer passed away in my second year and I didn’t realise that the message had been past on. Had it been noticed earlier on, I would have got that prestigious second class upper. A Desomond Tutu (rhyming slang for 2:2) is still an honours but it still hurt.

When I did my masters, I missed out on a B by 3 points. I have no excuses for that one, I missed out, but there is nothing I can say or do. Again I was gutted, if only I had studied harder, if only my brain had kicked in the exam hall, maybe I would have got that B, but I didn’t.

When I did my Law Degree, once again, the three point curse came between me and that elusive Commendation mark (which is the equivalent of a 2:1), my 57% brain had failed me once again.

Why am I giving you this history lesson I hear you ask. Well, I applied for a job many moons ago. I went on the jobsinghana website when I first found myself unemployed and applied for every job I felt had a sliver of hope of getting. Project Management, Marketing, Supply Chain, Procurement, Administration, anything with the hopes of getting at least an interview. One of these jobs was with the Accra Institute of Technology. The position was for a Marketing Manager. I applied, and I left it at that. It is not uncommon for one to apply for a job and not get any form of response even if it is to say, sorry mate, you haven’t got a chance in hell of getting this job so don’t even bother.

I was quite surprised though when I got an email about a month later to say that I had been shortlisted. I had a questionnaire to fill in and had 24 hours in which to submit. I say questionnaire, it was more like a paper interview. The good thing was that I had 24 hours to think of an answer. I still wasn’t so sure that I would get it, but I gave it a bash. This was Saturday, I was called on Monday to complete an aptitude test. That’s when the adrenaline kicked in, I really had a chance of getting to the end. Alas, the 3% curse was to get me once again. I went to the internet cafe (as I couldn’t trust that my internet connection would sustain the two hours in which I had to do this test) and I went through the questions, one by one until I reached 100. There were all types of questions, it was more like an exam from an access course, general knowledge, English, Maths, computer science, you name it, the questions were on there. I finally got to the end and clicked on submit. The pass mark was 60. I got a notification “FAILED score 57%”. I was gutted, so close and pipped to the post because of 3 points. If only I had gone over the ones I was not sure of the answer and checked them again. If only I had not been so confident that I had passed (I honestly thought I would get at least 80 right). The only thing I could do is log out , tomorrow is another day.

So back on the internet I go, maybe there is a job out there that will not require a test, in the meantime I pray for an end to the three point curse.