Campus Whispers: Exam blues and an acute case of double vision

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What you need to know:

  • The of reckoning has come. End of semester exams are underway and I am out of sorts. I can barely concentrate.


  • A terrible case of double vision attacks me every time I open a text book. I feel like that politician who has not fulfilled a single campaign promise throughout his five-year term but now has to return to the people for another round of campaigns.


  • From where will he get fresh lies? How will I face my exams?

January is showing comrades dust. Personally, I hadn’t expected this month to be filled with so many activities. The excitement of the Africa Cup of Nations, the very highly fluid political season punctuated by stress-inducing exams...does any other comrade feel overwhelmed?

Last month, when the exams were postponed to a seemingly faraway January, a palpable joy had reigned within and around the university premises. I had, like most comrades, been running around with a wig of complacency throughout the semester. I had been attending lectures, passively of course, but in-depth, comprehensive studying is where I was failing and failing miserably. News of the postponement therefore came as a great relief for me and my brigade of lazy but functional students – which is basically every campus-going human.

Now, the time of reckoning has come. End of semester exams are underway and I am out of sorts. I can barely concentrate. A terrible case of double vision attacks me every time I open a text book. I feel like that politician who has not fulfilled a single campaign promise throughout his five-year term but now has to return to the people for another round of campaigns. From where will he get fresh lies? How will I face my exams? I admonish myself more harshly than the stereotypical maternity nurse. I think of my villagers who will be waiting for my results. Those for whom I had taken this course with a big name, primarily to shock them out of their wits.

I proceed to hold a solo pity party. Hitting me harder than a maths teacher’s cane is the realisation that I have missed a number of Continuous Assessment Tests. These CATs have nine lives and they have the curious ability to drive even the most dedicated comrades to the much dreaded supplementary exam.

These are the days when I realise that studying and excelling in your college studies is such an extreme sport. While living up to the You Only Live Once(YOLO) mantra and the Swahili adage “Ujana Ni Moshi”, we inadvertently waste a lot of time diffusing and decompressing in entertainment joints, getting high on highly temporary ecstasy. 

And to think that none of these regrets changes the fact that I am set to sit two exams this week! I can’t even think of going to the library. The human traffic in there is similar to the one on Kanairo’s Tom Mboya street. Even those who have never set foot in the library will now be found bent forward on their desks, struggling to grasp a year’s worth of studies in a day. Not an option.

Forget the library. Why does this exam period always make breakups look like the norm? Hangout joints around campus are deserted, it’s as if the health minister has recently announced an outbreak of leprosy. Anyway, I won’t be fazed by the chaos. As I type this, I am lounging on my creaking bed reading an Oscar Wilde classic. I am approaching life the same way a gambling addict who is planning to give tithe, buy land and increase his fleet of cars with the Sh1 million he doesn’t yet have does. I have no worries.