Two weeks to go and trepidation gradually set in…my phones, all three of them got busy. As if on cue, the pings won’t just stop. Everyone just wants to be in sync with the assignments deadline. (The PAU beast had raised its ugly head yet again). Pressure on every side. The project supervisor is ready to listen to anything except “my chapter one is not ready yet”. APA’s style tutorial mistress is waiting to give a justification for Dr Silk’s APA’s style strict preference. At this point, one is not even sure of what the greatest fear is -the beast waiting to devour you in less than a fortnight? The stringent guidelines for all the assignments? With Dr Silks’ leading the pack? Or the insane distance from one end of Lagos to another? ibeji or ibeju Lekki? How boring.
Then having finally gone through the excruciating task of certifying your assignments, the soft, hard and a combination of both, okay, if you are anything like me you’ll be saddled with another beast, a friendlier one though, of making the appropriate selection of the right blend of clothes, shoes, bags, wristwatches, jewelleries and perfumes, oh yes that counts for me too, for the seven day lapse.
Fast-forward to Sunday, School resumption eve, (not usually my favourite day by the way), the hydra-headed beast of driving all the way from festac town to this great citadel of learning is already lurking around, waiting to be conquered. If you are a driver in a metropolitan city like Lagos, feel free to add your own conjecture on how crazy driving can get in this part of the world. A city lavishly endowed with quite a pocket of crazy drivers. From the 2nd toll gate, all the way from Abraham Adesanya to sango-tedo, in fact the entire stretch from LBS down to awoyaya, the road network gives this gripping fear chills. What makes that nervousness so real is not only because one has been sufficiently fed the gory details of some unfortunate but avoidable mishaps, or the unconventional driving style on that stretch, not even the long and boring distance, but the fundamental fear of trying to manoeuvre through the traffics (another level of beast by the way). This feelings put together are unsettling. An academic pursuance, fraught with distressing episodes.
However, most often than not, I’m left to wonder if this is the standard distance education or distance education? Abi is there a slight tilt to it?
Out of boredom, one still finds the strength to sketch a vague picture of what this great institute would ‘pan’ out to be in the next couple of years, wasn’t it called Pan-Atlantic University anyway?
I try to look beyond the scary shrubs directly across the road on the parking lots; thankfully one has outgrown that numbing fear of wondering if an antelope would out jump out of that bush to attack “mankind”. Rather, I’m projecting a great learning and research institute, with the finest blend of whip smart individuals. A citadel of learning endorsed by reputable national and international bodies. With a referral from Ivy League Schools like, Harvard University, Oxford University etc., for exchange programmes and all. I look forward to phrases like “PAU Africa”. I see PAU competing head to head with Schools like, Princeton and Cambridge Universities, respectively. And oh, if what the dean told us about the school planning to have an art collection in its portfolio is anything to go by, then Pan-Atlantic University already has its name along the path of history.
As pioneers of this great institution, our statutory responsibility begin with, proper representation of this brand (PAU). Consciously and consistently converting all those exhausting intensive academic weeks, exclusively to being professional gurus in our respective fields of endeavour. We are looking to be grateful to have come to PAU, in a not-too-distant future, as much as PAU is looking to be glad we braved through the odds. The successful people we know today, walked this road. No one ever said it was going to be a stroll in the park. We can do it, let’s hop to it.
