today today

Today, I went through all the human emotions. A sigh of relief at waking up undeformed, unparalysed, undead. I struggled through the cold bath I needed to take. Then I realised the trousers I was gonna wear were ripped at the crotch by unkown forces. I reached for my jeans and saw that they were curiously ripped in the same region. So I picked out a pair of chinos to iron. On ironing I found stains on the legs...like a dirt map or something. But I kept them on the top bunk of my bed!!!!!!! My kid sis isn't evil enough to climb up there in my sleep naaaa!!!

The next emotion was frustration- I walked like three streets in my sector of the estate and I couldn't find a single tailor open at 8:30. Not even the itinerant hausa Mai Gyara boys always disturbing my life.

In the end I had to choose between the lesser of two evils. I went for the jeans, calculating that by the time I reached my destination I would have the opportunity to get it fixed.

You see, today I went to check my final results. Five long years of studying, of fat-burning heat, of traders from hell charging ridiculously high charges because we were all "Omo senator" (a.k.a senators kids). Yeah, right!

But the day of reckoning came. Exams ended in December- so it's been five long months of waiting with bated breath. Waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop. are we going to law school this year?

I felt the familiar annoyance, tinged with amusement and some eye-rolling when the exam officer wasn't around. He sauntered in around 11:30...okay more like cruised in cos he was rocking this "new" ride...some minivan (SUV wannabe). He took his time to greet every colleague he could remember. He saw the number of people waiting for him since morning and probably decided it wasn't high enough to justify his entering his office.

The suspense kept building. Of course I'm an incurable optimist and I had nothing to fear. Not carryovers, not missing scripts....none of that. I just wanted to know that I graduated with honours...especially in the upper division. I'd come 40km to hear that.

To my greatest surprise after the long wait he sent me on an errand!!!!!!!! A very long, mind-numbing errand!!!!

To cut a very long story short he called me in around 12PM, shook my hand and said "congrats. You have a 2-2".

That was the moment I wished I had powers like The Flash or A vampire like Edward. I wouldve slapped the beard out of his face, pulled out a tooth from the front of his mouth, fed him salt till he gagged.

I said, "thank you sir"

I was in such a state of...ennui that I failed to even notice I had a CGPA of...oh, well, never mind. I missed a 2-1 by mere decimal points. 0.0-something. Instead ithe first thing, surprisingly, that crossed my mind was- "who will marry a guy with 2-2"

How utterly foolish, how utterly hilarious

I had the fortune of meeting friends who lightened my mood with horror stories, how 4pointers graduated with a CGPA of 3.3x. Of how so many did not graduate.

My grievance was not that I didn't make the grade I wanted. It was working so hard and coming so close I was 0.0x from touching it!

It comes from the fact that some things in life might be less easy to achieve with the 2-2 stamped on my certificate.

Already I've become wiser- within a few hours I've become quite the adviser on the failures of the Nigerian education system. Of the obvious perforations in the credibility of those calculating our results. Of the conspiracy against the students whether real or imagined.

I'm tempted to say "who needs a 2-1 anyway? It's not about certificate, it's about who you know" and other such defeatist sayings. Well, it does matter- a 2-1 puts you on a shorter job queue and all of that.

But in all of it I'm glad my original thinking and hardwork is worth what at least what my alleged grade was. It opens my eyes to the truth that exams may not actually be the best test of knowledge.

It taught me, above all, that I'm Human- fragile, brave, brittle, intelligent, complete- with the ability to miss certain targets.

This is Not the end!!!!

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