SCHOOL
WAS MYSTERIOUS JUST LIKE THAT
If you are like me, you must have graduated with lots of
hope and enthusiasm. I even thought I would graduate with a first class; please
don’t ask for my G.P. I wouldn’t give a proud answer. We took our final year exams with a sense of
urgency. We just couldn’t wait to write our last papers and leave school. My
final exams went pretty well without much drama except for the part when I got stuck
in one paper. About that course- we were supposed to identify animals we had
never seen before (not even till now). The worst part of it is that the course
hand-outs were photocopied several times over, so that we couldn’t see the
diagrams of the insects clearly. And we had to identify and list the
differences between insects we could barely see in the hand-outs. As if this
wasn’t bad enough, the lecturer released a new handout each week, some on the
very week of the paper and I can count how many times he came to class; and
when he did, I don’t know how much we absorbed what he taught. He pretty much
spoke over our heads. School was fun like that.
School sometimes was a huge joke to me, (with respect to
school management and lecturers’ efforts). For example, in my 100 level, we had
to take a Microbiology Practical Class with a number of other Departments. We
numbered more than a thousand to be handled by one lecturer in a single
classroom. During the Practical classes, the lecturer practically whispered her
words. If you miss the first two rows, you would only see her mouth move. She
never made any effort to raise her voice. There were no sound systems or
projectors to help, not to talk speak of the very stuffy condition we had to
endure; and the school expected her to handle over 1,000 students. Trust me, she
maximized the situation. She ensured she enhanced the situation by whispering
her lectures.
Did I tell you about our results? There was a time I had
this problem with a particular result (it was very common amongst students
those days, and probably still does). I prepared well for the exam and did all
my assignments. I was surprised to get either a C or D, I’m not sure which one
it was. I went to the lecturer’s office to challenge the result. There were
only a few lecturers you could try that with in my school those days. I met the
lecturer in his office to explain my problem to him. He asked me to bend down
and search a pile of papers in his shelf for my department’s exam sheets. I
searched for over fifteen minutes. Each time I got up, he would ask me to
search again or point to a different pile of paper for me to search. When I
realized what was happening, I got up and refused to continue the search. I sat down and pleaded with him to remark my
script, I was sure of how I answered questions in the exam. He told me a long
tale of how he would have married me if he had met me in his younger years. I
tried to bring the discussion back to the issue at hand and he blatantly told
me he couldn’t do anything about it. He couldn’t or he wouldn’t- I didn’t
understand the difference. But the old man had made up his mind and I soon
found out it was futile to push unless I was prepared to keep bending down to
search his entire office and most likely bend somewhere else.
This man never came for lectures. So, there was no way he
knew any of our names in person. He sold us his textbook to read and prepare
for his exams. Those days, we usually read to prepare for exams, not
necessarily to get informed. I really prepared well for his exam and it was a
heart broken me that left his office when he said he couldn’t help. He didn’t even
ask for my name or matriculation name. I went to my room, turned the music loud
and danced as hard as I could to suppress my frustration. You wouldn’t believe
my surprise when the result was reposted and I had a “B”. School was mysterious
just like that.
Twitter/Instagram: @club7teen
No comments:
Post a Comment