Solomon Grady, born on Monday and buried on Sunday. Class, hostel, chapel, mosque, faculty, department, assignments, group works, vivas, tests, problems, research, or just plain “jacking”. We are all used to them. This is the University of Ibadan, the first and arguably the best. Full of work and academic hustle. Full of intellectual pursuits at a very high pace. It is very easy to get into this cycle and never getout. Classes from Monday to Friday, sometimes Saturdays and Sundays too. 7am till 5:30 pm,(sometimes 7:00 pm) Church programmes from 6:00 pm to 10:00pm. Assignments and study from 11:00 pm till 3:30am, then a little sleep and then up at 5 the next day to continue the cycle again.
Catching the 8-9 hour a day sleep cycle aptly recommended by our GES 107 lecturers is almost impossible if not unfathomable in this school. If you are a “serious” student and you still catch 6 hours a day, then should consider yourself lucky. Some of you are already wondering how to survive and stay healthy with less than 5 hours sleeping time every day.
I guess most of the stale students especially those who have spent more than two years on this campus already know how to balance their equations. So, this is mostly meant for the over-eager fresher students and the new stale students who haven’t learnt their lessons in their first year.
I once heard of a student, who spent all his days in the reading room, he never gave himself a break, he never rested, he just kept poring over his book, and surprisingly , he still ended up on a third class. Why? It’s simple, he never got out of the cycle, his brain became over-saturated and all his reading kept bouncing back. It is that simple.
Skipping classes is not good, but when it happens (as it most probably will every now and then), you should recover as quickly as possible. But apart from the classes, there are some among us who believe we must attend every tutorial, every group discussion, every over-night reading session. Those are the ones already in Grady’s vicious cycle.
Why kill yourself? Why refuse to live life now that you can actually live it. Why force yourself into such a vicious cycle that might leave you with a good grade( if you are good enough) but will definately leave you wondering whether you actually had a life in school. Whether you would have any stories to tell your siblings and children except reading, reading, reading all the time
Please, catch a break, every now and then. The semester is just beginning and it is easy to fall into the hustle and bustle of classes and tutorials. But please remember, you didn’t just come here to study, you came to get a life too. We all know UI is very serious with academics in general, of course that is the number one goal, but please, GET A LIFE too.
In case you are wondering how to survive and stay healthy on a 5-hour sleep cycle most days, I think I have found a way out. Most of the time, it is not really sleep the body needs, you just need to rest a little bit and distract your mind from the things that you mainly worry about actively (most probably your studies).
So, dear brothers and sisters, no matter how tight your schedule is, no matter how heavy your course load is, no matter how busy you are, learn to take a break every now and then. Before you almost drive yourself crazy and leave yourself in regrets, lamenting a life you never really lived.
OKEMAKINDE SAMSON K.
