‘’Take chances, make mistakes. That’s how you grow’’ – Mary Tyler Moore
With the memory of the festivities of the holiday firmly behind us, being nothing but a backwards glance revisited for the purpose of remembrance, a new reality has fully set in. School has resumed! Now, that exclamation means different things to different people. To those who had a well-paying job during the break, it is the saddest news. To those who had travelled abroad, luxuriating in the temporary lush of foreignness, the call back home is the stuff from which nightmares are crafted.
To those resuming from mandated industrial trainings and teaching practice, struggle continua! However, for the smarts among us, whose minds ejaculate with joy at the masturbatory thought of being back in class, listening to the sweet music oozing out of the well-read mouths of lecturers, this is paradise. Hurray! Also, the lover-boys who only get to see their girlfriends in school, it is the setting for a romantic comedy. To the pringle singles, your quest for a romantic redemption continues. And there are the freshers…
GO HARD OR GET SCREWED
If you are a fresher, we would like to welcome you to the great University of Ibadan, the first and the best, the 800th impact ranking university on the planet known as earth. We would like to tell you all that, before informing you officially, as is our pledged duty, that you are screwed. Now that you are fully part of the system, we can begin telling you the truth behind the workings of the campus – the eccentricities and subtleties which are the vehicles of the shenanigans engendering this seventy-four-year-old wondrous institute of learning.
KILL THAT THOUGHT!
If you chose the University of Ibadan out of some preconceived idea of a vibrant social life bustling with untamed energy and wild notoriety, then you have just earned yourself the biggest shock of your life. This is the place where sociability goes to die. Now, we do not mean social life in the basic human-relations sense, but in the hip and colloquial sense. The parties that hold on campus are semesterly, if at all. The community stifles social liveliness in the lives of many students. School life here is not the fun charade you see in movies. Someone should have already told you that.
If you are the over-achieving kind who does not know failure, whose aim for coming to UI is to continue with that Headboy, all-A1s, best-student-award-winning glory from secondary school and slay the behemoths that are lecturers in UI, you have made a grave error; this is a place where CGPA drops like an album.
While it is not entirely impossible to enjoy a flawless streak of academic success on campus, it is implausible. Especially if you are in the humanities, your success is not just based on your merit, luck can play a big role. The mood of the lecturers while marking, errors in computing, area of concentration of the questions and the character of the invigilators are some factors that could affect your result in the end. It has been said, that ye cometh to this university with hopes to becometh a first-class student, but ye get screwed, and book of life messeth ye up. [Okay, no one says that, ever. We might have made it up. But they might as well do because it is the truest thing ever]. You need more than an egghead to be a first-class student, you also need the prayers of your grandmother from the village.
NEVER WALK ALONE
Moreover, if you had aimed to find some solace in being able to keep to yourself, you were wrong. Everybody is going to be in your face. Your academic achievements – the core of your studentship – is public knowledge. {Ask a stalite: Book of Life}. You are going to have roommates who you will have to share personal thoughts with. You will be pressured into joining a group, which is a beautiful thing unless that group specialises in maiming people and stashing their bodies into boxes, in which case, do not join such groups, if it is not going to be a police case, then the school will take it up. [Ask a stalite: SDC]. Your fellowhip popsies and mummsies will want to know how you are doing all the time. Some might even come to your room to visit weekly.
ABOVE ALL, MAINTAIN SANITY
It is cold in here. The entirety of the system is like a hot glistering rod of a blacksmith ready to mould you into so many forms you never thought of – the good, bad, ugly, desired or undesired. At some point, you might feel you have gotten a hang of how the system works, not until it hits you again with a more heated rod and you feel there’s nowhere to turn to. This is when you need to keep your face above waters, find healthy support systems, take short breaks if you must, and hit the streets again. You have to keep sane to bag that degree.
CONCLUSION
We do not take any delight in scaring you. It is not our goal. However, we believe there is a need to prepare you for the worst there is to come. There is nothing to gain from selling to you something you have bought already. So, just know that this is a place where scoring high is hard, keeping your social life alive is herculean, maintaining your privacy is tough and pleasing lecturers is just impossible.
Some days, you will get frustrated and wonder who forced you to choose this school but on other days, if you play your cards right, you will be able to stand proudly and declare yourself an unrepentant agent of the first university in the federation. There will be good days. There will be bad days. Here is to hoping the good days outweigh the bad. Above all, maintain your sanity. Welcome to the next chapter of your life.
All Correspondences should be directed to the Editor-in-Chief (07034849211)
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