They say that the secret to a successful life is time management and consistency which on a normal day I would have under control but some days I do get rather bored of it and try to do something atypical.
I am a student, so my life is very much like every other student's. But there is a very huge difference between being a student in Nigeria and being a student elsewhere but I'm not going to dabble in that, instead, I'll tell you what it's like to be a veterinary student for a day.
The most important thing about being a Veterinary student is time management. My classes are scheduled to begin by 8:00 am which means that I have to be awake by 4:00 am to do some light reading before heading out in search of bathing water. My reading usually lasts for about an hour or an hour and a half, and from there I move out of my hostel in search of water. It's not common for me to always be in search of water as the school makes sure that all including water is regularly available. But due to the recent scarcity of water that has been in loom since mid-2022, I guess it's fair to say that this is my new normal.
After my successful water hunt, I return to the hostel at about 6:30 to take my bath, and finally, by 7:30 I'm done with everything else including breakfast, so I head to class.
My classes are usually the worst part of my day as they usually span a total of nine hours. Yes! nine hours... A regular student of medicine and surgery would report for a daily lecture that would only last for about five hours but for some reason, students of veterinary medicine tend to go hard.
Although the time duration is extremely stressful to maintain daily there is a little break period placed in between the morning and the afternoon class to make the class a little bit flexible for people like me that wake up early and get stuck in class from 8:00 am till 5:00 pm. And it is that one-hour break regularly scheduled by 1:00 pm that makes being a veterinarian worth the stress. But it's not necessarily the time that makes amend for the stress, and pain of learning none stop. It's the short time spent with friends that nulls the effect.
I have a whole lot of friends, funny, loyal, serious, reliable, and unreliable. I call them my clique, my gang, or my homies( actually I don't ...but let's pretend I do) and I have grown a tight bond with them. But out of my numerous friends, my most special person to be around is, Uche. She's, tall, dark, brainy and a very beautiful singer. The first time we met was at the school library, where we were preparing for our examination. She charmed me from there and ever since, we've been friends. Aside from Uche, there's Mibriz who likes to call himself Acidjack in self-proclamation of his unmatched intelligence, Micheal who doesn't have that much of a personality apart from being a ladies' man who somehow succeeds in attracting girls with his enormous head that is very distinguishable from his normal size body... Well, I guess it's true what they say, "girls are attracted to big things...".
There is also Ifeanyi, he is extremely religious just like me and hopefully one day we'll start up our church together.
There are still a lot of my friends that I would love to introduce to this write-up but I'm getting really tired and hungry so I will keep that for another day.
So, after hanging out with my friends for that stipulated one-hour break. We complete the remaining hours of the lecture which makes it a total of nine hours of lecture. And from there I head back home. The fact that I'm home doesn't mean that I'm free, it means, that I'm left to struggle to take care of myself(personal time)..and within this period I'm either preparing dinner, which usually takes three hours(6-8pm), sleeping, which usually last from 9 pm-midnight (although in some cases I do extend it till 1 am). Once I'm awake by midnight I prepare myself for an intensive 2-3 hours of reading before taking an hour or 30mins nap. And just like that, the cycle continues.
And although it might sound stressful, I choose to believe it as a stepping stone in my pursuit of happiness.