VET 101: BECOMING A VET STUDENT

        

   

Author's note: Rule 1- Never explain satire.

 Rule 2- Go back to Rule 1.

The first step to becoming a Vet student is to have the unique ability of doing yourself with your own hand. Because there is no other reason why anyone will willingly fill a demanding course like Veterinary Medicine on their Jamb form without being held at gunpoint.

Number two? Have a non-existent social life

What is a social life? Is it Popesko's textbook? Is it a form of Introductory Microbiology? Is it Georgis' book of Parasitology?

Signing up to study Vet means you've locked up the portion of social life allocated to you from heaven in a dark, tiny room and thrown the keys into a bottomless pit forever. 

You will never get it back. In other words, so pe otilor.

Thou shalt not hang out with your friends in other departments, or thine failure will be televised on National TV.

Thou shalt not attend owambe on Saturdays for thou will like long hours in small animal clinics by fire by force.

Thou shalt not go to parties or accept invites to go on dates, or thine failure will be in flying colors. 

You will read, you will read oo. Because if you don't read, your lecturers will make a mess of you.

Thou shalt never be caught engaging in abominable acts like having fun and catching cruise because you can't be a Vet student and be happy; what exactly is funny? 

Is Vet a joke to you?!

Studying Vet (especially in UI) and being happy are two parallel lines that must never meet; you must do your best to avoid happiness like it's a confirmed case of Anthrax.

3. Develop a high titer of antibodies against failure.

I mean, I  understand you. You probably came to Vet school holding tightly onto your award of the overall best-graduating student in your secondary school.

You had swept all the awards for best in Chemistry, Physics, and Biology with a sprinkle of Further Mathematics. You probably even had a first class in your 100L.

That's why till date, you can't stop staring at that page in the famous book of life that displays your CGPA beautifully like a phoenix rising from ashes- 3.6/4.0. They even put you on the Dean's honor list. (Leemao)

But you will come to Vet school, and you will write the test of one famous lecturer in Anatomy (name withheld for security reasons). You will get 0/40, and you won't believe your eyes.

You'll ask your classmates to help you check if there's an invisible 4 before the 0; you'll get a magnifying lens and quickly get a microscope to check your script. 

You will clean the lens of your oversized nerd glasses over and over again. The devil will even drop an idea in your mind that you should take your script to the lecturer for correction, but nothing will change.

You have failed; you have scored 0/40.

Gradually, you'll write more tests - you'll get chased in something called a steeple, and you won't understand why the damn alarm goes off in 5 seconds instead of the allocated 45 seconds.

You'll write more and more tests and graciously bang them all.

Little by little, you'll resign to fate. You'll now wonder if this is karma for all the dull students you made jest of in primary school. 

You'll wonder if it's because you haven't been dutifully paying your tithe. You'll even "fi ese Ile to" and wonder if this is the handiwork of the ancestral arrows sent from your beloved kindred in the village.

But eventually, you'll understand. 

You'll understand that this place is fire for fire, and you'll start to console yourself that grades won't even matter in heaven. 

You'll tell yourself every morning when you wake up that the first in class won't necessarily be the first to make it in life.

Your new philosophy will be that exams are not a test of knowledge.

So, when your first end-of-module exam results are released, your hands will shake, and your heart rate will skyrocket to 500 beats per minute till you see 50/100 written boldly next to your name. 

You'll flashback to your secondary school and remember how you would have cried like a 20-year-old widow and refused to eat or drink for one week if you had this type of score. 

But instead of being sad, you will fall to your knees on the streets of Ikeja, throw your hands to the heavens, and scream at the top of your lungs, "Ope oooooooooooooooooooooo"

 You have made it! You have completed your initiation rites of being vaccinated against failure, and you are very much on your way to becoming a Vet student!

                                                         To be continued.

Written by Babalola Oluwafunmibi.