Travails of a Final Year Pharmacy Student
I once read in the news that Nigeria’s suicide rate was underreported. Then, I found an interesting theory about suicide.
Basically, if you’re unhappy and you have an external thing to blame your unhappiness on, you’re less likely to commit suicide. Just for the record, I’m not suicidal but this theory made me realize that regardless of the toxic relationship Pharmacy education in Obafemi Awolowo University and I have, it still gives me a sense of purpose. This means that every time I’ve desperately wanted to scream my lungs out of frustration, I’ve continued to move on regardless.
Even when there is a perceived acknowledgement or respect for the course by other people, I still struggle with embracing it wholly. Sometimes, it still feels like a separate thing, something that is external, abstract rather than internal or true, which is why I have not fully embraced it. Maybe that is why the perceived authority bias that studying pharmacy projects does not affect me. I simply do not feel it.
Instead, I am tired. The ASUU strike has continued to linger for too long and has continued to unreasonably stretch a five-year course to a seven-year course. Everyone tried to overlook the stagnancy the COVID-19 caused on education in Federal schools, and the pause in examinations caused by the protest for a better health care system in the university in 2021. I tried to find solace in humour like everyone else, and it kept me going, until it didn’t.
Then, I noticed how lecturers would rather pay more attention to your corporate dressing than your mental health deterioration. I noticed how there automatically became a huge attention on ‘side hustles’, and ‘life after school’. It became a subtle reminder of my anticipated freedom. Even if it was not a guarantee of total freedom, the craving was raw and imaginable. The craving was enough, in a way.
Although pharmacy naturally offers a smorgasbord of different emotions, the major gift is remembrance. The gauzy memories that encircle me. I remember the staircase, the dull colour and the sound tired formal shoes make on them. I remember the smell of the library too. When I close my eyes, I can see the cloistered lecture halls during exams and night reading episodes. I remember waking up in a frenzy and I remember cursing loudly. I remember being clueless in the laboratory. I remember the uneasiness of sitting absent-mindedly during boring lectures. There’s the constant drift, exhaustion, monotony and fear.
Being in my final year has slung these memories at me unwillingly. I like to think Pharmacy as a course helps you if you generally do not like people. You will not need to conjure up excuses not to socialize because the excuses will be real. Now, if you combine that with extreme introversion, then the course will make the journey easier for you. It will seamlessly rob you of social events, interesting humans or stable mental health. If you’re extroverted, you may feel stuck, but you can find your way. It will be hard, but you will try.
Amidst the steady stream of chaos, there are a series of conniptions too. Your taste for humour may slowly morph. You will find out that the things that make you laugh are not things you’d readily laugh about. For instance, when you spend time reading the wrong lecture notes. Or when you ask your coursemate if they have ‘depression’ or ‘pain’ or ‘epilepsy’ when what you intended to ask for was the lecture notes, but the misinterpretation may suddenly become funny. In class, you may laugh at the lecturers’ dry jokes, their funny inflexion or the weird position of their nose masks. You may laugh after writing a somewhat favourable exam. Oh, you will laugh at yourself when you ‘mistakenly’ sleep off at night under the guise of overnight reading.
These are the memories you nurture. These are the memories that keep you going. Not the pain of sitting in classes you don’t enjoy, or the volume of materials you have to read repeatedly. It’s definitely not the tests you write every bloody week, or the three — sometimes four — hours of lab work. It’s not the writing of eternal lab notes or the discomfort of spending your Friday nights in school, reading and still trying to figure out why TGIF means ‘Thank God It’s Friday’ when nothing really changes. These are not the things you ponder on. They will hurt you if you do.
If you ponder on them, you will lose your mind. You will scream sometimes. If you have underlying anxiety, it will triple. You will give up, and you will give in again. You will cram and even when you understand or not, you will cram again. When you stare outside the windows that separate the faculty from the world, you will imagine what is happening outside it.
You will realize that your head will spin with different names of drugs, plants, names, dates, and annoying law sections too. You will freak out when you hear the cut off marks of certain courses and you will doubt yourself a million times. You will find solace in music. Jazz, rap, country. Anything that makes you sane. You will fall in love with caffeine.
Then, you will step into your final year like me, and start the hopeful countdown again till you realize that you only have a year left within these confines. It will make it easier to breathe. It will make it easier to see. It will make the travails seem meaningful and these memories will stay forever.
