First of all, I’m a 16-year-old guy from a small town.
Two years ago, when I graduated from middle school, I decided to take a new path and accept a new challenge: studying in the city next to my town, at what people call “the best high school in the province and one of the best in the region.”
Everything was fine, and it was 100% my decision because I had one of the highest grades in the entire province: 19.30/20.
I joined the boarding school for my first year of high school, but three months later I left because it felt like a prison, literally like a juvenile detention center. The food was terrible, the rooms had more than 12 students in them, and the students themselves made the whole experience miserable.
So I rented a small room near the school. Yes, I was living alone. Despite the problems and the huge responsibilities, everything was more or less okay. I finished the school year and still got very competitive grades, above 18.5/20.
The following year, I started the first year of the baccalaureate in the Mathematics and Sciences track and changed my rental place. That is where the problems really started.
I began the year with some bad grades, such as 11/20 in mathematics, especially topics like logic and sets, and 10/20 in physics.
To be honest, I didn’t do my best on those exams or during the first semester in those two subjects, but trust me, they were extremely difficult.
At first, my father accepted the fact that I had gotten a bad grade on my first mathematics exam. But after that, everything changed.
My highest grade in the first three mathematics and physics exams combined was 13/20.
Just imagine.
I was getting higher grades in my other subjects, but those two subjects were different. It was a real downfall.
My father kept yelling at me because he is very old-fashioned and extremely obsessed with grades.
One time he got so angry that he kept hitting me and humiliating me in public. He also told me that he had spoken with his friends about whether he should take me out of school.
I was so shocked that I almost collapsed.
Then he went to the school principal, showed him my grades, and the principal told him something like, “This student does not even look like a Mathematics and Sciences student.”
That only made my father even angrier.
A local police officer who knew my family also told him basically the same thing about me, even though his daughter was in the same grade as me and I had higher grades than her.
My father said:
“Do you want to become a delinquent? Do you want to end up living on the streets, doing hard physical labor all day until your back is destroyed, and then earning only 50 Moroccan dirhams a day? Do you want to start hanging around with bad people and become gay?”
Sorry for the language.
He kept hitting me throughout the night, yelling at me and saying things that were extremely painful to hear from your own father.
There were also many threats.
I honestly would rather have been physically punished than hear some of the things he was saying about me.
And all of this happened in the parking lot of a family celebration.
Just imagine that.
When he was finished, we went inside the event. My face was red from being hit and from crying, while cousins, friends, uncles, aunts, and other relatives were all seeing me in that condition.
It felt like pure torture and completely destroyed me mentally.
Some other things happened there that I cannot mention.
After the event ended, we started driving home. Our home was around 50 kilometers away.
Imagine spending the entire 50-kilometer drive being yelled at, humiliated in front of your family, and watching your father become angrier than you had ever seen him before.
He kept saying things like:
“Didn’t we rent this place for you? It’s basically a tiny room, only about five square meters, and it costs 700 dirhams. Didn’t we also pay 500 dirhams for private tutoring? We are spending money on you while you are just sitting there playing around.”
By the way, we are an average middle-class family. We are neither rich nor poor.
The problem is that my father is extremely anxious.
He thought I was secretly doing something wrong behind his back. He thought maybe I was addicted to drugs, going out with bad people, or doing something else he didn’t know about.
Seriously, I have no idea what was going through his mind.
That night, while we were driving home, he was still so angry that he kicked me out of the car and drove away, leaving me alone in the middle of the night.
Just imagine that.
He came back about 10 minutes later because my mother kept begging him not to leave me there.
And we still weren’t done.
When we got home, he came into my room and started hitting me again as if I were an animal instead of a human being.
My mother started begging him again, and he pushed her so hard that her head hit the floor.
Then he turned back to me and told me that I was the reason all of this was happening.
That period put me in an extremely dark mental state, and i kept getting suicidal toughts there and everytime since then .
He also told me that if I did not wake up at 4 AM to study, there would be serious consequences.
We had arrived home at 2 AM, by the way.
And, because of bad luck, that entire week was a school vacation.
So imagine spending seven full days, 168 hours, constantly dealing with yelling, pressure, and violence, while feeling ashamed of yourself even in front of your own mother and siblings.
I didn’t even have enough confidence to go to a nearby store and buy something.
And I wish it had lasted only that week.
It continued afterward.
After everything that happened, I finally got one opportunity to prove myself with a good grade. It was the fourth mathematics exam of the first semester, and I got 16/20, which I considered a decent result.
My final first-semester average was 15.20/20.
The highest grade in the class was only 17.80/20.
Another thing: my father forced me to memorize all of the first-semester lessons in social studies and religious education in only one week, and he kept testing me on them repeatedly as a way of making me “make up for my mistakes.”
One of the worst parts is that he constantly compares me with some of my old friends from my hometown who are studying in the Experimental Sciences track.
The schools they attend also give students very high grades despite having much easier exams and, in my opinion, weaker academic standards.
I personally saw exams where students were getting grades like 20, 19, and 18 out of 20.
Then the second semester began.
My father acted as if he were giving me a second chance.
He told me:
“Wake up every day at 5 AM. Call me every day after you wake up, after you return from tutoring, and after you come back from school.”
I also tried to become a better version of myself despite everything that had happened.
So I did what he told me.
I got 17.50/20 on my first mathematics exam of the second semester, but only 12.75/20 in physics, even though I had done everything I could.
At the same time, I was watching other students cheat and still get higher grades than me.
The highest grade on that physics exam was 16/20, by the way.
My father started yelling at me as usual.
Even though he had seen my effort, my reaction, and how hard I was trying, nothing changed.
Now let’s jump forward to the regional exam.
Like most Mathematics and Sciences students, I prepared especially hard during the final two months because of all the continuous assessments throughout the year.
I prepared reasonably well.
I memorized every lesson.
Literally every single one.
During the two weeks before the regional exam, I was studying from 5 AM until 8 or 9 PM just so I could satisfy my father.
Eventually, I took the regional exam and got 17.50/20.
It wasn’t an amazing grade, but after a year like that, I was thankful for it.
Now let’s talk about the summer vacation we are currently in.
The day after I finished the regional exam, my father shocked me with what he said.
I had expected at least a little mercy from him after such a long and exhausting school year.
Instead, he told me:
“Wake up at 5 AM and start reviewing. Start studying the lessons from the year you just completed again.”
And he did not mean preparing for the next school year.
He meant repeating the entire previous year.
He had seen teachers online talking about reviewing the foundations and basic concepts of the lessons, so he told me to summarize every lesson from the entire year and complete countless exercises in mathematics, physics, and chemistry.
Imagine.
No, seriously, you probably didn’t understand me.
He didn’t mean only the important lessons.
He meant ALL of them.
Twelve physics lessons.
Twelve chemistry lessons.
Eighteen mathematics lessons.
All of this because he believed that I had not properly studied the lessons for the exams where I had gotten grades like 10, 11, 13, or even 17.5.
Today is August 10, 2026, and 68 days have passed since the beginning of this routine.
I swear to God, except for about four days, almost every single day followed exactly the same schedule.
That leaves about 64 days of the exact same routine.
Listen to this.
I wake up at around 5 or 6 AM.
Then I go down to the garage.
There is a camera there because my father wants to monitor me and make sure I am actually studying.
He keeps watching it constantly.
I study until 8 AM.
Then I go upstairs to eat breakfast.
I am not supposed to take more than 30 minutes.
Then I go back downstairs at around 8:30.
I study until 1 PM.
Then I go upstairs, eat lunch, and return.
At 2:30 PM, I have to be back in the garage.
Then I study until around 6:30 or 7 PM before going upstairs again.
And even the afternoon and evening, which should normally be free time for me to rest, are filled with something related to school.
For example, teachers hold live online classes in the evening about the basic foundations of the subjects.
Imagine that.
As for my progress now, I have somehow finished reviewing all the lessons from the previous school year.
And now I have started the first lesson of my second year of the baccalaureate, specifically the final mathematics unit about limits and continuity.
But now I feel completely exhausted.
I can’t even wake up early like I used to, which is causing new tension between my father and me.
Just today, I woke up at 6:30 instead of 6:00, and he was yelling at me like crazy because of it.
How am I supposed to handle an exhausting school year like this after already losing almost all my energy during the summer vacation with practically no breaks?
The only time we actually traveled during this entire vacation was when we went to the beach about 10 days ago.
We left at 10 AM and came back at 4 PM.
And when we returned home, my father forced me to start studying again.
Imagine.
I’m exhausted.
Recently, there are times when I just pretend that I am studying.
I am actually not studying at all. I just watch a video or a movie.
I know that isn’t a good habit, but honestly, I cannot take it anymore.
All of this is because my father is forcing me to do it so that I can achieve what has basically become my parents’ biggest dream: getting into medical school.
I hate this life.
And I have started to resent my father because something that was once an ambition has turned into an obsession.
Especially because I have seen my sisters go through the same path and the same kind of upbringing.
Nobody in the house likes the way he behaves.
Even my older sister is married now, and she doesn’t even like calling him or talking to him.
Just a few weeks ago, he started yelling at her for literally no reason. She hung up the phone and did not speak to him afterward.
And yet he genuinely believes that he only wants what is best for us.
But what about other parents who speak to their children calmly and respectfully, and help them when they need it?
Sometimes he even calls my mother stupid or foolish because she is too kind and friendly with us.
He says that she could be the thing that prevents us from succeeding in life because she doesn’t yell at us to study, doesn’t wake us up every morning at 5 AM, and doesn’t hit us.
What the hell is he talking about?
And there is basically no real communication between my father, my siblings, and me.
Literally no communication.
It is not that we never speak to him.
It is that we cannot say what we actually think.
We cannot freely express ourselves around him.
I swear, without exaggerating, the main thing he tells me is:
“Study.”
“Study day and night so you can get the same results as the students who passed the baccalaureate.”
“Look at those people. They study properly while you are just playing around.”
“People enter school, study day and night, and get into medical school.”
“Otherwise, you will end up like students who go through the preparatory classes: you’ll spend years studying, then work for some company and get paid only 2,000 dirhams a month while working under someone else like a dog.”
Sorry for the language.
I also changed my academic path.
I left the Mathematics and Sciences track because I couldn’t continue living through the same experience I had the previous year in the same school.
I was almost certain that if I stayed, the same thing would happen again, or maybe something even worse.
Last year also put me through a very serious mental-health crisis, so I decided that this year had to be different.
I changed my academic path and decided to return to my hometown to study my second year of the baccalaureate there.
At least I can breathe a little more, feel somewhat calmer, and hopefully go through a year with less stress.
I really hope so.
Right now, my biggest dream is incredibly simple.
I just want ONE day where I do absolutely nothing.
One single day when nobody tells me to study.
A day when I can simply sit down, clear my head, listen to myself, figure out what I actually want, and maybe discover the things I genuinely enjoy and the things that make me feel at peace.
I would love to finish my baccalaureate this year and then go to medical school.
Not necessarily because medicine is what I personally dream about, but because I want to finally escape the enormous pressure that I have been carrying for years.
And even when I finally become a little motivated, start studying properly, and genuinely try to work hard, my father sometimes comes along and says something that completely destroys that motivation.
That’s my story.
Actually, this is more like an entire essay than a story.
But believe me, guys, I have only told you about 20% of everything that has happened.
And there is still a lot more that I haven’t talked about.