THE FIRST DAYS ON CAMPUS (CONCLUDING EPISODE)

Episode 5- The lecture and night reading

click here to read “THE FIRST DAYS ON CAMPUS (EPISODE 4)”.

The experience with lecturers not making themselves available in classes made some students lose interest in going for lectures, presuming the same would occur the following week, but reverse was the case, lectures started powerfully the week.
The first class was interesting, though it was a brief Introduction to the course and few notes were dictated. Unlike the secondary School pattern, the lecturer was so professional that only the smart could jot down few points dictated by the lecturer. The lecturer’s dictating speed was so high that he wasn’t worried whether his audience was following or not since all University undergraduates are always expected to have good writing skills. It wasn’t my first time of taking dictated note, so I got along with it. The course was a three-unit course which means the classes were scheduled to hold three times within a week. While he was done and was about to leave, he gave some materials to the course representatives to circulate among the other students taking the course.
After lecture started, reading followed immediately. I preferred reading during the day, so I regularly visited the school library at my leisures. I hardly read in the night, except during examination period. But night reading intimidation came when I discovered many students vacated their hostel in the night to read in academics area then returned at midnight. This made me give night reading an attempt.
Towards past ten in the evening, I had left the school hostel to AUD 1 with my school bag containing my materials, a lecture theatre mostly used for lectures in the faculty of Arts. It was a little bit distant that I was almost exhausted when I got there. I relaxed myself for some while with the aim to starting reading after the brief rest, but the plan was altered, I didn’t know when I dozed off. The sleep lasted for over an hour. When I woke up, I wasn’t even in the reading mood, but I needed to. I had to pull myself together, then I brought out some books and started reading. I did this for some minutes before I returned to the hostel. I got back around 2pm in the midnight with my eyes very heavy for sleep. Though I was able to learn few new things, but it affected the following day’s activities negatively.
I woke up very late, I had to rush things in other to meet up with my first class which was scheduled to hold at 8:00AM. I couldn’t eat anything because if I started cooking by that time I would miss the class, so I decided to leave my stomach empty till I returned. I was still feeling sleepy when I got to the lecture room because of the night reading I had the previous night which affected me having my normal sleeping duration. I discovered that the night reading wouldn’t work for me, so I deviated and continued with my day reading.
After classes for the day, I returned to the hostel immediately, I wish I could attend the school library to read but I was tired. I ate the bread I had bought along for dinner and slept off.
Several activities like online registration of courses, checking of results and printing of relevant documents could be done on the school e-portal. The semester just ended, C.A test and examination had been concluded. I logged into the eportal then clicked on ‘check semester raw score’ and saw that all the results had been released. I had above 70 in all the courses I took including free and special electives. “Wow, 5.0 GPA!” I shouted while I woke from the sleep. I couldn’t believe it was a dream. The dream might have been caused by the thought I had the previous night before I slept strategizing the way to make a first class. It was the same thought that made me spent the previous night at AUD 1 with the aim to read. Then my mind went to Roy T. Bennett quote “Don’t let the expectations and opinions of other people affect your decisions. It’s your life, not theirs. Do what matters most to you; do what makes you feel alive and happy. Don’t let the expectations and ideas of others limit who you are. If you let others tell you who you are, you are living their reality — not yours. There is more to life than pleasing people. There is much more to life than following others’ prescribed path. There is so much more to life than what you experience right now. You need to decide who you are for yourself. Become a whole being”.

THE END

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