My name is gafar!
I'm a law student of the university of Benin, in my penultimate year!
In a class of over 200 lawyers wannabees, I think I can safely say(safely cos nobody can beat me up for it) that I'm one of the dullest here.
I'm sure this is not unrelated to the fact that I'm a certified member of the "house of lords" (the back benchers), the captain of my class team too, one that laughs too often, one that has too many friends, one that is not very spiritual, one that is too gregarious, one that believes the dress code is too boring, and above all else- one that doesn't sleep in the library!
These I am - amongst many other needed attributes to be a "poor" law student!
I'm sure this is not unrelated to the fact that I'm a certified member of the "house of lords" (the back benchers), the captain of my class team too, one that laughs too often, one that has too many friends, one that is not very spiritual, one that is too gregarious, one that believes the dress code is too boring, and above all else- one that doesn't sleep in the library!
These I am - amongst many other needed attributes to be a "poor" law student!
And so it's not a surprise (at least no longer) when fellow class and course mates alike, walk up to me and they want to know how I managed to gain admission to study law( the last one that tried, found out that my grades were way higher than his! Talk about irony) or why I want to be a lawyer ( and I'm like - who says I want to be? So somebody can not just study law and not be a lawyer shey?)
And then there's the subtle and often not too subtle discrimination eg- where I step forward for a presentation and everybody is stunned or a group discussion were my hand is raised up because I want to contribute and everybody pretends like they can't see it and I'm forced to rebelliously and rudely cut in!(and then they are surprised that I know anything at all.
Or a particular episode I ll not forget (at least not in a hurry), were my Tort lecturer leaves the front of the class, takes the effort to climb the many flight of stairs up(by the way we need an elevator in that Lt) and then after tediously scanning all the faces, she points at me - ofcourse at first I pretend like I'm oblivious to the happenings buh she's persistent, so I get up and she asked her question, not without first turning around dramatically -asking the class to listen attentively (I'm a very shy person, ok remove the "very", point is - the extra attention did not help my cause) yet I did managed to give her a very correct answer (I know because I spied from the textbook but that's beside the point) and wait for it -" she was speechless " not the speechlessness that comes with amazement but that that comes with disbelief and disappointment, I swear it was like she expected me, NO scratch that, she did expect me to fail, it was like she wanted me to fail (at least that's how I saw it) and to affirm my suspicion she asked me to repeat what I Had juz said again, listening intently this time for flaws or whatever she was, my point is - she walked away, "REMORSEFUL", without as much as a kudos or Welldone!
Or a particular episode I ll not forget (at least not in a hurry), were my Tort lecturer leaves the front of the class, takes the effort to climb the many flight of stairs up(by the way we need an elevator in that Lt) and then after tediously scanning all the faces, she points at me - ofcourse at first I pretend like I'm oblivious to the happenings buh she's persistent, so I get up and she asked her question, not without first turning around dramatically -asking the class to listen attentively (I'm a very shy person, ok remove the "very", point is - the extra attention did not help my cause) yet I did managed to give her a very correct answer (I know because I spied from the textbook but that's beside the point) and wait for it -" she was speechless " not the speechlessness that comes with amazement but that that comes with disbelief and disappointment, I swear it was like she expected me, NO scratch that, she did expect me to fail, it was like she wanted me to fail (at least that's how I saw it) and to affirm my suspicion she asked me to repeat what I Had juz said again, listening intently this time for flaws or whatever she was, my point is - she walked away, "REMORSEFUL", without as much as a kudos or Welldone!
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying my lecturers are bad, trust me, they are not (at least some are not) buh my point is - quite a few of them are prejudiced and stereotypical, so that in their subconscious and not too sub, they ve defined me and my cohorts as "not do wells", dull, unserious minded juveniles ( to be fair, sometimes we are) so that to them we are a lost cause, one they rather not waste their precious time (which I pay for, by the way) on.
The question I keep asking is- "like christ, if you did not come to teach the dull ones, who did you then come for?"
It is my belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with our educational system - I mean they (lecturers) will persistently tell me and my people to stop making noise, ignorant of the fact that it is this so called noise making that make these lectures interesting for us, that act as speed bumps for us lest we fall asleep all through (I'm not saying that they are boring or anything like that but....)
"We live in a society were we spend 12 years telling primary and secondary school students to keep quiet and then we thrust them into the world and tell them to make a change and "SPEAK" up against social injustice " speak up? When they can't even so do freely in the comfort ( there's no comfort, it's a figure of speech) of their classrooms?
I don't want to talk about my dean who teaches labour law and yet the student association of law is.....
Neither do I want to talk about my contract lecturer in 200level who comes to class and tells you of how he is a big fan of the union president of a renowned institution in western Nigeria because of his boldness and conviction and yet when you stand up and disagree with his "rules/policies", he tells you scratch that, he "orders" you to either sit down or get out of "his" class depending on your luck!
Most often I'm tempted to retort - "it's not your class sir, it's "our" class!" buh then instead I just find myself telling the devil to get behind me, afterall the good book says -"wisdom is profitable to direct".
Else they ll say - I'll not go to law school!
Most often I'm tempted to retort - "it's not your class sir, it's "our" class!" buh then instead I just find myself telling the devil to get behind me, afterall the good book says -"wisdom is profitable to direct".
Else they ll say - I'll not go to law school!
Back to my point though -" everybody is a genius, buh if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, then it ll leave it's whole life finking it is dull"
Students with creative minds are often prone to fail because our educational system is largely based on having a high working memory capacity aka "cramming" rather than a great imagination! So that we've turned creative students into dead head memorizers, we have decapitated creativity!
Yes I maybe the dullest student in my class buh definitely I'm one of the most creative students there too!
Creative students that are perceived dullards/unserious- lemme not mention names buh royal is a good example, Sach eHima too, Joshua Ogbeide, Uro James, Emmanuel owah, joseph asikpata, irikefe, micheal, lebari dekina, I could go on and on ( like literally I could) buh my fingers ache already!
"Let's change the way we see, then we can change the way we live" - gafar
You hate this article? - well thanks for reading all the same!
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