Who killed our Education?

Who killed our Education? Who pronounced the death sentence? Who are those ensuring that she dies everyday? She really is dying everyday. I refer to education as she because in my opinion education is a mother. She gives birth to all the development we see in the society. Thus, her place is supposed to be hallowed and placed above everything else. Thank God Olufemi Dada's name was mentioned in the papers for graduating with A's in all his courses in his chosen field of Psychology; thus becoming the first Nigerian to graduate with a G.P of 5.0 in Nigeria from the University of Lagos (Dr. Victor Olalusi was the first Nigerian to achieve that feat in 2013 when he graduated with a G.P of 5.0 in the field of Medical Science in Russia).  However, right now Olajumoke is now the brand ambassador of two companies, has been given a modeling contract, etc and her story and story has gone viral. I'm not beefing for her. The stars shone on her, let her enjoy. However, how many companies have offered Olufemi a job? If it did happen, was it ever talked about in the papers? Has his picture gone viral? How many people know his story? Who is celebrating education in Nigeria? Olajumoke will soon become a celebrity with millions of followers on social Medias while most people don’t even know who Olufemi is-these same incidents occurred in Lagos and roughly in the same period. Granted, that there will never be a time educationists and models/fashionistas will have the same amount of publicity; education is the more lack-lustre stuff between the two but isn't there a way the media can make academic excellence look attractive and desirable to our young people? I believe that they simply have the power to do that.  I'm worried about our young ones; I am very worried about them.

Sometime ago, I had very serious issues in school and that was several years after I graduated from the university. I became worried about the fact that I hadn't been mobilized for the national youth service. It was discovered a long time and several visits to school that 17 of my results were missing from their compilation. Now, how can a student be in school and 17 of her results be missing and she wasn't informed by the secretary? What is a student even doing in school if 17 of her results are missing? I was bewildered: I saw most of those results while in school.

 Let me quickly chip this is in-there was a time a result was posted and I had a D. When the same result was reposted, I had an E. Not to mention of a time when I had a missing result and following up the Lecturer to make my complain for months because she was hardly in school, she gave me a huge pile of papers to search for my results. After a long search with the lecturer breathing down my neck, I found my result in another department.

Back to my story-the secretary told me to go and look for my results. A note went off in my head. Where was I going to start? I didn't know any lecturer I could approach for help me. And then, how was I going to walk up to a lecturer to ask for the result of an exam I took 5-6 years ago? I thought it was the job of the secretaries. Please, never go to those offices to tell them what is or what's not their job or you might end up never graduating-such is their power.

In the midst of the shame, embarrassment and unthinkable stress, I embarked on a weeks-long journey of finding my results. I found 11; I was going to take a spill over and the results might not be accepted because I was past due for a spill. That meant that I was on the verge of loosing the admission and all the years of work I had put in and all the money my family had spent. I decided to do something rather than do nothing. I went to all the lecturers involved, bought the textbooks and began preparing for the exams. I read like a madwoman. I was desperate. I wanted to prove to the system that I wasn't getting what I deserved. I prepared like my life depended on it: Infact I was ready to defend my result should the need arise.

On the day of the first exam, I was all nervous. It had been a long time I took an exam and even though I was prepared, I was still very nervous. I got to the hall fifteen minutes to the exam. Seeing all those very young and bright faces cheered me up. I found a seat and settled in. It then dawned on me that the hall was very noise. Everyone was chatting in groups. I thought it absurd: one should normally expect a quiet hall filled with students doing their last minute reading. "Computer age kids, maybe they are geniuses", I mused. When it was time, an announcement was made that the venue of the exam had changed. We went to the new venue, we were told to move to another. And so for the next fifteen minutes, we were trying to settle down and eventually did. 

The answer sheets were shared and I was ashamed to write my matriculation number. For the next twenty minutes, I was encapsulated by answering the questions. I lifted up my head to stretch and I saw the girl beside me copying from my book. I told her to please change some of the words, she said it didn't matter. I told her it mattered to me. I wanted all these result nonsense to stop so I could serve and move on with my life. I continued writing. By the next time I raised my head, I saw a most amazing thing. The girl was looking into my paper; the girl beside her was looking into her paper; and so did the next and the next such that they formed a network of about three rows all copying from one source-me. I couldn't believe my eyes.

After the exam, the girl sitting beside me asked for my name and number. From then, she would locate me during any paper we had together. I asked what level she was; she said she was a spill student: she just finished the previous session and her friend was in final year. I said "You're a spill student and your friend in final year, yet you both are not afraid of failing?" She made a face and said, "What's the point? No matter what you write, you will still sort the course."

To be continued...

You can write to me at: scriptwriter87@gmail.com

Twitter:@club7teen

LOVING YOURSELF (being me pt 3)

Do you know the amazing thing? A lot of people abuse drugs but do not go mad or die but how will you know if you are the one that will fall victim or not? You don’t know. Safe thing-stay clear.

 A lot of people make crazy choices and still get by; however, you don’t have a statistics of how these things play out so take care of you. 

"what is all this noise about drug abuse? check out the statistics of those
who abused drugs and other substancs and aadvice your self."

In the midst of the partying and drinking, ensure that you are making the right decisions 

 for your future. You owe yourself that much.
You won’t always be a teenager or a young person.
Let the decisions you make today take care
of you tomorrow.



 Guess what? In the midst of all this craziness and noise and vanity, you can make the right decisions; you can hear the voice of wisdom; you can be you. Separate yourself from the noise then you can hear yourself; and when you hear yourself, wisdom will speak to you. I have a brother who is still going through the rage of teen age. 
Sometimes, he comes back drunk, throw up, mess up the house and get sick. Some occasions, he would come back so late, getting everyone worried. At other times, he would raise his voice at the adults in the house or blatantly refuse to do his assigned house chore. He also got into smoking a bit. We always talk to him about the dangers of drinking so much-he could have liver problem, become a drunkard, get into trouble with the authorities and all that. He would change and then resume the cycle. One day he came to me and said he was tired of living that way. These are his words-“I’ve realized that there’s actually no profit in living this way. I think my major reason for living like this is my friends. I don’t want them to think I’m different or I’m still acting like a child.” I was totally amazed. As the days went by, I saw him make adjustments and take his academics more seriously. He still makes mistakes now and then, but he is determined to change. He separated himself from the crowd and the noise and was finally able to decide who he wants to be. You should do the same too. Being yourself is a gift. It sets you free to be the best. It enables you to love yourself, to love your life and to love your decisions whether good or wrong (you learn from the wrong decisions). It makes people comfortable in your presence and desire to be their best.  So would you?

       

BEING ME (PT 2)

Space would fail me to talk about men who were written off by everyone else, men like T.R Roosevelt and Albert Einstein. 
I’m sure it was a lonely world for Abraham Lincoln who was in the habit of failing in elections and who was also in the habit of going for higher positions each time he failed. 

Each of this people had one thing in common-they had a strong faith in themselves.

Having a faith in yourself is the only that thing that can help you make decisions you won’t regret. It’s very easy to join the crowd, wear the same uniform, look like everyone else. It’s very easy. However, being you is the hardest to thing to do. It’s usually easy to pretend everything is okay than to say how you really feel about things and even harder when that opinion differs from everyone else’s.

Magazines tell us how to dress and how shameful it is to be fat or ugly. Stars show us to live and behave when we are rich and popular. Society, peers, groups shows and conditions us on who to be and how to behave. Some of us are so afraid to look inwards. Some of us are afraid to discover what we really want or who we really want to be.

How did we get here?  If you can’t be you, 

"there's no crowd, can't you see?"

who would you rather be? You could be 

out there envying the life one celebrity 

who you feel his life is perfect. 

If that were so, why do some of them commit suicide, abuse drugs and go through seasons of 

depression and therapy? 

Nobody’s life is perfect.

 Life is as beautiful as you make it.

     As you make your bed, so you lie on it. 

The key to all of this is to be comfortable in your own skin; to believe in yourself; to make decisions you are responsible for; to know what you want and go for it; to stop following the crowd because there is no crowd. Do you realize if you make any mistake as a result of a poor choice you made out of peer pressure, you and you alone will live with it? True, your friends might come around visit you in the hospital (or any other place as the case may be); soon enough, they will move on and you alone will have to live with whatever consequence your decision incurred. 

At the end of the day, the only thing you have is you and your decisions. They are the only things that are permanently yours. I’m not downplaying the importance of family support and all those sacrifices they have made and will make to see you become a great person. However, if you refuse to make something out of your life despite all their sacrifices, they might write you off as that son/daughter who decided to be a problem; then you will have to live with the burden of their disappointment and the burden of your years of wrong decisions. Does it make any sense to you?

 If you are still trying to understand what I’m saying,

 look at that drug addict that patrols your neighborhood,

 does his family or friends come every day

 to give him money for food and drugs? 

Remember that your classmate that had to

 drop out of school because she got pregnan

t and had to withdraw from school because

 she has to care for her baby? 

The worst of all is that the boy denied being the father, so she fills the role of a father and a mother, roles she is not even prepared for.  I heard of a classmate who was shot to death because he smoked weed, attacked a police officer who misfired and shot him to death. I remember two course mates who went for a party. The driver was either drunk or careless and the girls didn’t notice because one lost her life, the other her arm. The one that lost her arm lives today out of divine providence; it was a long time before she resumed school. I also know of one who went mad as a result of drug addiction; he later died. At times, I wonder how their lives would have been if they made different choices.

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BEING ME (PT 1)

The four guys walked faster as the girls came into view. They couldn’t take their eyes off the girls. Each of them made a mental note of what they would say to the girls. Jide, of course, was the only who wasn’t caught up in the rhapsody of emotion. It was as if he wasn’t there. “Jide, don’t mess this up. The girls are four in number and so are we” Bayo said to him. “And what am I supposed to do?” Jide asked. Before he could an answer, the three guys walked to three of the girls, leaving him with one of the girls. It felt so awkward. He didn’t know what to say to the girl or what she expected to hear. He looked at the other guys and admired how so relaxed they seemed to be with the other girls. For loss of what to say to say, he asked for her name. “My name is Esther, and you are?” “Jide” he replied. After what seemed like forever, she asked “won’t you invite me to the party tonight? We can go as a couple.” The bells rang in Jide’s brain. He knew what going to such parties meant-all that loud music, smoking, the girls suggesting all sorts of things with their body; the worst of all being that the local gang hung out there and he didn’t just want to have any contact or problems with them, those guys are deadly. The two times he partied with them, he came home asking himself if he enjoyed it or if he simply avoided being called a sissy by the other guys. The deadline for the writing competition he signed up for was in two days and he intended to work hard on it tomorrow but he wouldn’t be able to do so if he attended the party. Now, standing before the girl, he didn’t know the answer to give. He looked back to see the six paired and all looking at him, as if saying, “Jide, don’t mess this up.” He didn’t want the girl to feel bad, seeing she asked the question he was supposed to ask: he didn’t want the group to taunt him: he didn’t want to miss the deadline of the writing competition. He just stood there and said nothing. Esther, having waited for ages for Jide to reply, walked away. She didn’t know if she should feel embarrassed or feel pity for a guy who couldn’t hold his own.

Caught in such a situation, what would you do? We know that the right thing was to miss the party and meet up with the writing deadline: he could always attend another party the next week, next month or whenever. But standing before the girl made a lot of difference, not only would his group taunt him, his reputation was also at stake. Everyone in the neighborhood and in school would know how weak he was. On the other hand, Jide has always seen himself as a great writer. Joining these writing competitions brought him closer to his dreams. They were preparing him for his future. So it’s like this-his future against what everyone would think of him.