that genius woman Imelda and my version of adult school

I am blogging now. And because I have decided to write, all those fancy ass thoughts I always have floating around have disappeared. Sucks when they do that no? I wake up in the mornings and get started on my allotment for the day from Martin. If I’m lucky he sent them yesterday which means I got started. Not writing, thinking. Sometimes though I am unlucky, and I have to wait until the morning to think, research and write.

Somehow I don’t like that. I like to stew with work  at the back of my mind, get it mellowed down like fine wine that’s been allowed to breathe (I dunno since I teetotal totally and all, but I hear that’s what people do) and then sit down and print those 4000 words in less than three hours. Unless, again, they’re 1000-worders and above, then I just get bored and cry instead. I don’t cry, but I feel like it.

Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, so after work it’s time to fix dinner for Colin and then head out to school. Accounting school. Don’t ask how I got there, because the best answer I can come up with is usually a shrug. First I was doing it for the guys as DT&T, but after they totally snubbed me the answer changed to “*shrug*, because why not”.

It was easy in Sec 1 and 2, probably because I did no reading at all until the last month. But this time I thought I might do things differently, so I registered for class. That helps I guess, but Sec 3&4 are real work; the threats from everyone don’t help. I keep telling myself it’s just for fun and I shouldn’t worry, but easier said.

I’ve always gotten through school by sheer adrenaline. Allow me to explain. I’ll attend class (skive a few for no reason at all other than who attends 100% of classes. Or it’s Friday, or Tuesday), and proceed to forget about it until the exam is in a day or two. Then I’ll pick up my book, leaf through the first few pages and wait for the night before the exam. Then I’ll read and understand everything, only to discover that there isn’t enough time to read and understand everything. So I’ll cross my fingers and hope to pass. And thankfully, pass. Not with flying colors, because that’s for those guys who go to the library and stuff, but good enough to maintain the family standard.

I’ll explain further. My mother recently graduated from campus. She enrolled in a distance learning program to do Psychology Counselling (Counselling Psychology?), because you know, self-actualization. The bairns are out of the nest so what’s a girl to do? She had First Class Honors. Nobody in the family got that before. Even us guys who did full-time studying. But I have decided not to walk down that road. Because that woman Imelda is a genius. Or a lucky non-genius.

For four years I watched her come home from school with modules, grumbling about how the exams screwed her over a good one, and how ‘this time’ she’d start reading early because she never wants to go through it again. Once last year when dad was still in hospital and she had exams she punched a tout inside a Latema Sacco. Right in the face. It was an awkward girl punch, but she absolutely did.

Anyway, soon, she would abandon all good intentions until she was due to be in school in two weeks. Then she would magically remember the seven term papers she had to write and stay in the office until 8pm every night. And then go to school having completed five. Mbili atamalizia Nairobi. The following week was exam week, so generally speaking, aside from when she opened the module to do homework, she’s read nothing. The night before exam, the girl leafs through the module, if there was one, scan a few questions from past papers and goes for exams.

And dammit she would pass. All A’s and B’s too. In my campus I think I got a couple of A’s in some non-issue common courses like Zoology and Communication Skills. So that’s how that Imelda person got through campus, and got first class honors. You know how we always say campus lecturers don’t mark papers; they just broadcast them randomly into piles that will later be assigned grades? My theory remains that she was prayerful, and God was gracious, so she always landed in the correct pile.

She got a C once, and raised hell in the house about that mean lecturer who gave HER a C, HER, HEEERRRR, and in the computers common course no less. As I listen I remember that time I came from SAM Conference in Nakuru in 2010, praying so very hard for a D in this Calculus unit I took in sophomore year, because I just couldn’t stomach the thought of retaking another semester of Calculus and the integral of ‘ a^u ’. It is, by the way, 1/u, just so you know. Quietly, I postulate that perhaps this was the paper that was actually marked. She says I’m just jealous. I say she knows it’s true.

Again, where was I going with this? Oh yeah, that’s how I did school too, and I’m just peeved that I can’t do that anymore. This thing where you have to study every day, I don’t get it. Who does that, studying every day? It’s very new.  Which is why my exams are in six weeks and I haven’t started studying. And I have to pass, because I won’t allow myself the option of failing. Keeping up the family standard. Maybe I idolize Colin a little bit, but as well I should; he’s done very well for himself.

It’s new, this working for success. I hope it turns out okay. Especially those two courses I haven’t actually started reading for. And the four I have started reading for, and discovered that all the things I thought I knew, I actually know nothing about. KASNEB has a funny way of turning things around. We’ll do examples in class, and I’m like, yeah, I totally see how that makes sense. Then the teacher takes a question paper, and all of a sudden it’s just new things. How do they expect me to think about all those things within half an hour in an exam room?

Huh, when this is over I shall seriously reconsider whether that “*shrug*, because I can” will propel me into part III. Though I imagine that if I’m lucky enough to pass I’ll still do the same thing come next sitting. Because dammit, old habits.