As we slowly approached the examination period, all the lecturers who never showed up during their assigned time started creeping out from all nooks and crannies. This is a normal practice in many universities, so I made up my mind to continue being the persistent and enduring student I had been all through the semester.
Classes were set on odd days and odd hours but resilience was my watchword. However, one lecture constantly took it too far.
Mr. Grace always showed up for her fixed lecturers late and after she entered the class, no one else was allowed in; even if you briefly stepped out to grab a bottle of water.
Not only was she constantly late for her fixed lectures on odd days, she made learning laborious and absolutely uninteresting.
“Yes you! Answer my question.” she would randomly ask.
“I’m sorry ma’am, but I have no idea.” A student would innocently respond.
“You have no idea right? But if you are asked to play web 3 games or to do tapswap you would have an idea?”
“Ma…ma..”
“Leave my class! Next person!” she would thunder.
Initially, we all assumed that she was just an angry lady in a messed up country but eventually we concluded that her method of teaching was solely to keep students on their toes and we were right. This conclusion was drawn after we noticed that students who were attentive and read topics ahead of time usually thrived during her lectures with minimal to no form of embarrassment.
A few days into her marathon lectures, she assigned each department a topic with clear instructions, some of which included; divide yourselves into four groups, each group should read on one topic, do extensive research on the topic, print and spiral-bind your research and finally, appoint a leader to defend the topic.
Such topic assignments are normal but usually more time is given. In Mrs. Grace’s case, she gave the topic on Sunday morning and asked us to present it on Monday morning. This made every single one of us panic because this was going to be part of our continuous assessment and any mistake could lead to an unflinching zero over thirty marks.
My group members and I got to work. She clearly stated that she didn't want answers from the internet so we read huge textbooks. None of us slept properly that night because we had so much to do in such little time.
On Monday morning, we rushed to the printing shop to get our topic printed and within two hours, we were done. The final and most stressful phase was finding who would represent us.
No single soul wanted to take on this responsibility.
“Who would represent us?” I asked but nobody responded. We went ahead to create a poll but the person who had the highest number of votes came up with loads and loads of excuses.
We had barely three hours to find a leader and everyone was just so nonchalant. It was at this point that I knew that I had to represent my group, else we were definitely going to lose thirty marks after the sleepless night.
I got the print out and began skimming through it. Was I ready for the presentation on the very awkward topic? No. Was I going to present either way? Yes. Was the lecturer going to detect my unpreparedness and embarrass me for it? There was only one way to find out and this was by running the gauntlet.
As usual, Mr.Grace fixed the class and came an hour late. We were already behind time and she was evidently not in a good mood when she stepped in.
“Yes! Nursing students, you're up.”
I do not know about the rest of my course mates but I know that my heart was racing. All of a sudden, the comfortable turtleneck polo that I wore felt very uncomfortable. My palms were all sweaty as I approached the front of the class.
“Good morning ma’am.” I greeted.
“Yes, what is your name?”
“I’m Wongi ma’am and I would be representing group four.”
She handed over the microphone to me and got the print out which I hoped to use for the presentation. I was left with three options; have a mental breakdown, use the residual knowledge from my research to present or quickly open the textbook on my mobile device.
I looked around the class and literally all eyes were on me. The only sound I could hear was the creaking sound of the only working fan in that classroom. Trickles of sweat ran down my spine but I still managed to maintain a degree of composure.
I unlocked my phone, went to my ebook reader and opened the textbook. Yes, I went with the last option.
“Good morning class.” I greeted, my voice shaky.
“Good morning!” Everyone chorused. You could see the fear, excitement and tension on every student's face. My face? I really do not know what emotion I portrayed.
“On behalf of the nursing students, I'm here to talk on the ‘penile organ’.” I started. That wasn't the best of topics to talk about but I did anyway.
As I spoke, I made sure to look in Mrs. Grace’s direction to assess whether or not she agreed with the points I was making. All she did was look through the printout as I spoke without showing any emotion.
“Finally, clinical relevance of this organ…” I snickered, as that was the last subheading.
After stating the clinical relevance, I went ahead to do a brief summary of the topic.
“Thank you for listening.” I concluded and the crowd went wild with cheers and a round of applause.
“Weldone madam” Mrs. Grace said tartly after the noise died down “but I observed a few mistakes during the course of your presentation.” Once again, my heart started racing.
‘Mistakes?’ I thought.
“You didn't add the functions of the organ, your diagram is not well labelled. Also, you didn't add the boundaries of the organ. However, your presentation was well paced and overall, you did a great job.” She concluded.
Boy was I happy! Prior to this time, I had never heard this woman compliment anybody. She returned the printout to me and told me to make the necessary corrections before submitting.
I took the printout, staggered back to my seat where my friends were seated and ready to criticize and praise me at the same time. The rest of the presenters eventually did their presentations; some were very good, others very bad and the rest were average.
After four hectic and suffocating hours and sixteen presenters in total, Mrs. Grace called it a day. Although my run through the gauntlet was very abrupt and unexpected, I assume it would be rewarding at the end of the day.
All images used belong to me and were taken with my mobile device except stated otherwise.
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