WHEN a student earns nine subjects in the crucial Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) exams, it is customary for them to move on to sixth form and later university, with the prospect of a successful career in their chosen field.

But for 16-year-old Kwane Thomas, the future looks far from rosy at the moment.

Six months after his brilliant performance in the CSEC exams, the Ferncourt High School past student languishes at home, uncertain of how he will finance his dream of going to university, where he intends to study to become an engineer or a lawyer.

“I don’t know how or where I am going to study yet. I’m still thinking about that,” Thomas told the Jamaica Observer in a telephone interview from his home in Eight Miles, a community close to the birthplace of reggae legend Bob Marley in St Ann.

After passing English language with a grade two in fourth form, Thomas sat eight CSEC subjects last May and June, achieving a grade one in six of them — principles of business, religious education, human and social biology, biology, mathematics, and electrical and electronic technology. He earned a grade two in Spanish and geography.

“The hard work paid off; it was a great feeling,” Thomas said of his achievement.

He has encouraged other youngsters to develop the pattern of studying that suits them best.

“My best studying hours are like two in the morning. [But] study in the way that you are comfortable, not like how other people do,” he said.

Meanwhile, in September, when his colleagues were heading back to school or college, Thomas stayed home.

“I was just thinking that I didn’t want to go to a sixth form school and it not work out. I’m looking at going to a pre-university school instead,” he said.

According to the teen, financing his way through school could be a problem for his mother Nicole Whilby — a single parent who is raising him along with a younger sister.

“My mother always motivates me, she was up with me in the nights when I was studying”, Thomas noted.

However, like so many other Jamaican children, the youngster received little help from his father.

“That is another story,” he told Career & Education when asked about his father.

Thomas has, in the interim, expressed his gratitude to the Bob Marley Foundation which helped pay his expenses through high school. Like Marley, he is also a past student of Stepney Primary and Junior High School.

To keep himself occupied and learning Thomas recently completed a evening course in customer service sponsored by the Tourism Product Development Company.

But for the long term, and with no relatives who can afford to assist him, the promising youth still searches for a way to get to university.

“I’m still negotiating with my mother about that,” he said hopefully.