When Your Plan Goes To Shit
This is Nigeria, be ready for your plan to go to shit and always be ready with your plan B and possibly plan Z
Hi Friend, It’s been a while you’ve heard from me though I promised to write more often🤡. Now that I am here, Hope you’re holding up tight!!! For real, How’re you doing? (Feel free to respond to this and be rest assured I will be here to respond to you)
Now to the real reason why I am writing this. If you have been following my newsletter or you could just quickly read through them, I have not written that much🙃, You already know I am in my final year of study at the university (of which I should have been done with last year but then Covid-19 came and then extended my stay on campus till now) but that’s not why I am here today. According to the exam timetable that was released last month, today -Friday, 8th of October, 2020- would have been the day I would have written my last examination as an undergraduate student of Obafemi Awolowo University but then I am sitting here not knowing when that day will be 😞 thanks to the university management and to think I was really looking forward to today not because I would have been done with this “school” (I still have to conclude and defend my project) but for the fact that I will not have to worry about “la cram” and “la pour” for the nearest future😶.
Quick back story to how we got here, According to the school calendar, exams started on the 21st of September and are supposed to carry on for about 3-4 weeks depending on the departmental examinations schedule. Personally, I am to write exams for 6 courses which were spread across 3 weeks (which is fair unlike that of the previous semester) out of which I have written 3. Then came the news to the student community that a final year student of the university has died due to the negligence of the healthcare workers at the university’s healthcare center. I got hold of the news at around 9 pm when a friend posted it on WhatsApp and before I knew it, everywhere was filled with the sad news. That same night, students filled up the healthcare center demanding for explanation and showing their displeasure at the workers because this is not the first time such will happen there. By the following morning which happened to be October 1 which is a very significant day in the country as it is the Independence Day Remembrance celebration, students across campus gathered and started a protest demanding that a proper investigation should be carried out on the cause of the death, and proper actions should be taken against anyone found wanting, followed by other demands such as proper funding of the health center, an overhaul of the system at the center and so on. The protest that started at the health center soon moved to the university gate and subsequently led to the blocking of the major road on the axis of the campus gate. After several events played out during the day, the school management decided to shut down the school because of the protest by the end of that day.
In days following the protest, there has been different reactions from different corners on the approach of the students protest of which I choose not to comment about in this post. If you think the students approach to the protest was wrong or right, let me know your thought.
The summary of the story is that the school has been shut down till further notice and I couldn’t write my last exam today.
On hearing the news that the school has been closed and all exams postponed till further notice, I had a mixed feeling of relief and sadness. Relief because it will afford me a breather from the exam stress and sadness because it has put a dent in my plans. For the past one month leading to that event, I had put all other non-academic related activities on hold including designing actively and publishing on studentswhocreate (which is a very dear project to me) because I chose to dedicate my full attention in order to get the possible best out of this exam and my final year project, and the news meant all of these will go on for longer (premium tears😫).
One thing Nigeria and its institutions know how to do best is pouring sand into your garri. If not the waving governor crippling the bike-hailing start-ups overnight, it will be Eme-efimile-eje-ki-n-cook banning crypto transactions or the touring leader banning the importation of food without any functional system in place. As a Nigerian, over the past 5 years, one thing you must have learnt is that all your well laid out plans can go to shit overnight not because of any spiritual attack or some natural phenomenon beyond your control but because one person decides to flex their power or authority unnecessarily, so you should know not to have just Plan A, try as much as possible to have Plan B, C, D, E up to Z if need be because this is a jungle, be ready for anything.
The summary of this post is to remind you to make alternative plans in case Nigeria does it thing, you will not become helpless and caught unawares. So if you are wondering what I will be doing since my plan has gone to shit, for now, I will be working on my final year project, publishing more interesting stories on studentswhocreate, designing actively (bring and refer me for design jobs and projects), attempt to complete the Google Ux Design course that was on hold, try to stay sane and possibly get on projects that interests me.
Hopefully, I come your way very soon🤗, but till then stay safe and sane (because this country can drive you crazy)!!!