Greetings!
Keeping quiet in the face of provocation has never been my thing and this is because I used to get irritated with what people do at times. I can say that I'm a disciplined person who would not tolerate nonsense from anyone no matter how big you are in society.
Just because of my act of discipline, so many people do not like me. I could remember Yinka a good friend of mine from my childhood days telling me that,
“Sam, as gentle as you are, one thing I hate about you is the way you used to act whenever you're being provoked.” When I heard him saying this, I quickly told him that,
“Yinka, I'm not that kind of a person, it's just that I hate cheating and that, I'm the kind of person that would defend anyone and myself if cheated.
A few years after Yinka had told me this, an incident happened and this incident was between me and my boss at work who happened to be the principal of the school. Then, we were asked to tutor a set of students for a national quiz competition but before then, we were to participate from the scratch which is from the local government level which we won and came 2nd out of 32 selected schools in which the top three schools were to be selected.
After the first phase of the competition, we proceeded to the state level and it's when we got to the state level of the competition that we realised that the competition was only meant for the best of the best.
Although, when we got to the venue of the competition at the state level, fear first gripped everyone of us including we the tutors, Mr. Olayiwola and I, as we all saw all the best schools with known names at the competition venue, but we, I and my partner tutor decided to calm down our students and reposed back in them the needed confidence needed for the competition.
I told them saying,
“Annie and Jacob, don’t be scared of anything here, we will win this competition, you gather you confidence together and victory will be ours.”
After telling them this, I could see them recovering their confidence. Immediately I swung into action as I started to revise with them what we have treated so far before coming to the venue and for the few minutes I revised with them, they were able to understand those things we have discussed.
After some minutes, they entered the main auditorium where the competition was to be held and it's a tough look on them after they had finished with the competition as they were not looking happy, but I asked them not to worry their minds, I mean Annie and Jacob. I told them that all will be well.
After they had left the auditorium, they state coordinator of the competition came to us and told us that we can leave that the result will be communicated to us, we left in good faith and when we were on our way, I and my partner began ask them what went wrong inside the venue of the competition, but they both told us that they were not given enough time to answer their questions, but we encouraged them not to panic. We told them that all will be well.
When we got to school, we reported everything that happened to the office of the school Principal and everything was adequately filed and we were well appreciated in words by the management of the school.
After a month, a letter was sent to the school congratulating the students that took part in the competition for their success at the competition. The mail read that they, I mean the organisers, will be looking forward to seeing us at the next stage of the event.
At this point, I and my partners started to groom these two for the next phase of the competition and at the set date, we went for the competition and at this final stage, only thirty-seven schools with the FCT included were present which means a school per state.
So, we started the competition with full confidence and at the end of the competition our school won the gold medal as we came out victorious. This time around, the results were announced immediately without wasting time and we all went home victorious with a cheque of five million naira given to the winner and 3 and 2 million naira given to both the first and the second runner-up respectively.
When we got home, we presented the cheque to our school management and the funniest thing was that instead of them giving those students, including us the tutors, something even if not too much out of the money, nothing was given to us. After a few weeks, we protested and just because we protested we were sacked from the school for instigating the students against the management. Although I could have taken it to the next level by using them, one thing I realised was that I was quiet even in the face of provocation, that's the new me as my old self would have got angry and cause chaos.
Thanks for reading.
Picture sourced from metaAi.
