I can remember vividly as if it was yesterday, my entire activities in the higher institution of learning usually coined “Campus Experience”. This experience is gathered throughout one’s entire stay on campus depending on the number of years attracted to one’s course of study. It encompasses not only academic struggles but also moral, religious, political, and socio-economic challenges.
Though one is almost simultaneously faced with a great number of the aforementioned challenges even as a fresher, each challenge is usually analyzed as an independent entity and generally weighed on a “final CGPA” scale; with every student displaying an enormous appetite for a lion’s share.
Campus experience if carefully integrated and successfully passed through, ignites or gives birth to a general belief that higher institution is a ground for unlimited and unbounded knowledge acquisition that is, a place where ideas are being germinated and cross-fertilized; otherwise it gives a different meaning entirely. Meanwhile, let me quickly share some of my personal experiences with you when I was a bona fide student of the great Ajanlekoko University.
Having struggled and defeated the almighty JAMB and it’s no less dislike sister POST-JAMB, it was like a dream come true. Consequently, upon my admission into the citadel of learning and subsequent arrival on campus, I was abruptly swept into a world of illusion, imagination and fantasy. The many gigantic, colossal and enormous architectural master piece which liters the over 4000 acres mass land area, the dual lane roads garnished side-by-side with whispering trees, the horticultural expertise displayed upon flower beds, the immaculately dressed stalites, the well positioned traffic lights that flinched through the eyes on every road; all reminded me of the great universities like Harvard, oxford and Cambridge which I spent time humming upon while surfing the internet. I spent ample time ruminating over my world of questionable liberty, and within one month on campus, I had visited almost every nook and cranny surrounded by the four walls of the university, ranging form the run-off-the-mills restaurants to the high profile clubs and relaxation centers. Academic goals and vision speedily became a secondary issue, of course I usually delude myself with a consolationary statement ‘all work without play makes jack a dull boy” and in extreme cases, the statement “pass through the campus and let the campus pass through you” seemed refreshingly justifiable. What a pity!
I was still basking in the pool of youthful exuberance when the first semester examination suddenly knocked at my door. I was a brilliant student right from my high school days, so I had no difficulty making almost average grade even with my incessant absence from lectures.
A 2.5 of 5.0 grade point average (GPA) seemed not a bad grade for me after all. The 2.5 G.P.A became a recurring decimal in my second semester, and then the fear of failure crept in and rapidly became the beginning of torture. While on holidays, I successfully covered up my degenerating and highly degrading academic life from my parents and concerned relatives by reading newspapers, magazines and engaging frequently in some tantalizing, acrobatic and philosophical verbal display. Time for academic revision was substituted for audible dissemination of tales of my campus experience to whoever cared to listen and as expected, a quite number of friends are usually keen to listen to my tales as it acts as a soothing balm that calm their nerves at my own detriment.
