When Kelechi told me to write an article about my experience as a first class student-the experience, travails, expectations, perceptions..., I accepted but did not deliver. I felt it would be a similar to a duck preening her feathers-a narcissistic act.
I walked into school on Monday morning, and was besieged by the human traffic of students who had come to write the Post UME examination, all of them with expectant faces hoping to be a member of this ivory tower with tall buildings and immaculately kept grounds. As the sweaty bodies of this hopefuls brushed mine, trampled me-I decided to write this cameo because someone in his freshman year might read this and use it as a guide in this place where you have the ‘freedom to read and not to read’.
I came into the University of Lagos that fateful October morning like every ‘Jambite’. I stared intently at the lagoon, tipped my head to view the peak of the Senate building and envied the staylites who seemed to know everyone wherever they went-I even envied their faded jeans which contrasted with our shiny and over-expressive outfits, I envied the way they knew the price of every item in the restaurants where we ordered a la carte and they did not have a stern father tagging behind in a safari suit.
Then it hit me like a bomb-‘Registration’, I will never forget that period of my university life-having to trudge the whole length of the school twice a day-the security guards acting so rude and condescending, being talked to in clipped tones, a staff calling it a day when it got to your spot on the queue, then having to make a decision between going to a class or completing some registration process.
When the lectures started, they were far from what we saw in the Hollywood movies-a lecturer talking to about thirty students, here we had a hundred plus students in a hall with seats for half that capacity, and a faulty P.A system to boot. Classes passed by in a blur of static, whisperings, shouting and endless stream of mp3 songs from people’s phones.
I made a few friends in the next level, and got their notes for the freshman year, so that while I unfortunately got stuck at the back of class for some lectures, and gained only my name on the attendance sheet, I perused the notes in the quietude of my hostel room.
Well. I think that sums up my first year; using notes from my friends in the sophomore year, endless nerve wracking registration process, I think the only bit of advice that comes from this piece on my first year is to align yourself with the right people immediately you get into campus, preferably with those in higher levels since a myriad of problems can be solved with a simple tip.
My sophomore year had the school placing high scoring students in certain hostels-the scholar’s list it was called, and at Jaja and Mariere halls, all geeks congregated. I was placed with the best students in penultimate and final years of my department, and that period constituted the apogee of my academic life on campus. In a room filled with the best of books and materials on my course, it was no surprise that I spent the whole session swotting with the ‘free’ materials, which were obtained at the price of an excuse and promise of safekeeping.
Penultimate year wasa baptism of fire, we were introduced to presentations and the courses that constituted the crux of the discipline and most importantly, I was not placed in same room with departmental scholars. So in the dusty rooms of Jaja Hall, with mathematics department students scholars quoting their abstruse Laplatz theorems, I learnt independence and after a semester of faltering presentations with a shaky voice and weak papers, I finally got the hang of it.
Now, final year, ‘In equity, I am a graduate’, and everything seems to be going on a roll; being the blue-eyed boy of lecturers, the subsidized accomodation offered by the authorities,the nice treatment by classmates but the fear of the unknown and a lot of issues come into the fore. People say first class students will find it difficult getting jobs because they are not team players, or because their typical anti-social nature will make it difficult to ace an interview, therefore the best type of student is the second Class upper student who is a composite student (academic and socially grounded). All that doesn’t seem to faze me though, challenges are there to be conquered, but as I tap this piece out, I have the niggling doubts: What if my project is not good enough, What if my last semester results don’t meet up, What if truly I am not a team player...?
I just hope someone reads this and understands that here, relationships cum friendships you strike matter a lot. In my case, I think that has made all the difference
