A week ago Unilag students resumed school virtually after a year of ghosting, radio silence and of course ASSU’s ever changing resumption date, which happened not once, not twice, but thousands.
I am a 400 level student in this great university studying mass communication and here’s what my first week of virtual learning was like.
Monday
After a whole year of chanting “The student in me died in march” I was up by 6 am and excited to resume, even though I was panicking that I couldn’t log in to the portal, or that I’d low-key forgotten my matric number. I put my notepads by my pillow (you can see that I was ready) and went on my group chat, only to find out that no one could log in. Nothing pleases a student like collective discomfort: as long as it’s not just me, all is well.
I was finally able to log in but then the site crashed. Wahala for who wan be serious student, or maybe I’m the one with bad luck. Classes were cancelled for the day and Unilag was trending on Twitter but as the devil will have it, one lecturer still managed in the midst of it all to give us an assignment. I had to double-check to see if I was offering that course and the answer was an annoying yes. I considered dropping it and generally dropping out in two seconds but decided against it in case my father could read my mind somehow. All in all, not a terrible first day.
It was a terrible day.
Tuesday
The ginger I had the first day had died. I was up by 8, but for once I didn’t check Twitter first. I went on my class group chat and saw that my course advisor had sent out a message by 6 am. Classes had been cancelled for the week, all we had to do was familiarise ourselves with the site. God bless God.
People who could log in sent materials from the site and then creation of group chats for different courses began. God save us. Turns out that I registered for 8 courses. In a whole 400 level.
One lecturer even started to hint at asking us to buy textbooks and do group assignments? Then someone stated that we had to download the materials from the site on our own because it counts as attendance. For 21 years, my life has been one big attendance register, make it stop.
There was still no class thankfully and yes I know it’s supposed to be a lecture-free week but you don’t know my lecturers.
Wednesday
This day showed so much promise of laziness and then like a thief in the night — except it was 2 pm — one lecturer gave us a group assignment to be submitted the same day. I was going to ghost them but then I saw the kind of people that were in my group: they won’t add my matric number if I didn’t do anything. So, I waited for a bit and when no one did anything, I created a group chat and added all eight of them. Still, no one said anything, so I posted the assignment. All we had to do was summarize what we had learnt from the five topics we’d been taught before the “pakurumo”.
I went offline and by the time I came back these scammers had appeared from nowhere and paired up in two’s for three topics, graciously leaving the longest two for me and one other unfortunate person. This is why I hate group projects. We sha got it done before 6 when we had to submit it. Not going to lie, it felt nice to learn something and even nicer to understand what I was summarizing — my school fees hadn’t wasted after all but I was also upset because ffs, allow me to be unserious.
Thursday
I’m not sure this day actually happened. We joined more group chats and got more materials but it was an otherwise boring day.
Friday
You know how there is always that one lecturer that will ruin your perfectly planned weekend? Yeah, that’s this man. His classes are annoying and his assignments are even more annoying. To show that he meant to destroy my plans, he appeared by 11 am — 11 is that moment in your day when the universe decides if it’ll be good or bad to you. He appeared with not one, but two assignments.
He asked to be added to our main group chat and at first, my course rep was worried because the last time we did that, when he was done talking, someone said “Bye sir” and removed him.
We eventually created another group chat for his course and he explained his assignment.
We have one week to submit this one *cries in Nkiru Sylvanus*. After that my course mates went back to posting links to their businesses, blogs, contests and a very long conversation I didn’t care to read through about the silhouette challenge. Besides the assignments, this week wasn’t all that bad (because it was horrible)
I just want to fight my former roommate for telling me that 400 level is a breeze, she didn’t add that the breeze can knock your teeth out. Vivian, it’s on sight.
