Zerayaicob Yaicob
If you were to find out you were the top male performer in the island in the 2013 Common Entrance Examination, how would you celebrate?
Zerayaicob Yaicob of The Rock Christian, who received that honour this afternoon, played football with friends.
This year he received 97 per cent in English, 98 in Mathematics an “A” in the composition with a converted total of 248.39 to gain entry into Harrison College.
When a Barbados TODAY team visited the school in Strathclyde, St. Michael to congratulate him, this young man was still engaged in a game. His mother and teacher, Hiruteselassie, however politely tore him away for a few minutes.
Yaicob, a devout Christian, said he was very elated about his achievement. Mainly since preparations for the examination was a lot of work and most importantly because his father, also attended Harrison College, and he always wanted to attend the Crumpton Street school.
Each day, his class did about three practise exams and also in the Easter vacation when the rest of the students were enjoying the holiday they were once again doing practise papers but he his mother kept saying it would pay off and it did.
Though this young man has entered and won many poster and essay competitions from the age of five, he said when he received the news today it was still a great surprise for him. He explained that although everyone he knew made him feel confident in his own ability he also knew he was going up against almost 4,000 students who he had no idea of their performance history.
Those competitions, the future Palaeontology, said helped to improve his writing skills as well as his way of looking at things.
He explained: “The composition was easy… because I was very good at vocabulary. Entering a lot of writing competitions, essay competitions so it had improved my vocabulary, once again my mother was very helpful. When the rest of my class were doing things like nouns, verbs, adjectives, she was going through my vocabulary with me teaching me. I had a vocabulary notebook, I would add new words to it everyday so that it would expand my vocabulary and by the time I was ready to do the 11-plus I would just have all these words in my head. So that when I need to write things down I would know exactly what write,” the very articulate boy said.”
Yaicob also thanked his family, teachers and friends for all their encouragement. (KC)