It was during medical board exams I realised it was possible to write two long essays simultaneously. Ten minutes before final submission, I had three blank booklets before me! That moment must have been my biggest moment of clarity.
I skimmed through the three essay questions at a glance. Right away, my brain ruled out one whole question as a no-go area.
It was as if my mind said, “Omoya, dat question na die. No near am at all. No even tink am.”
“But I get idea na,” I reasoned.
“Idea kee you dia!” an inner voice snapped.
Sharp guy that I was, I respected myself and focused on the two questions whose answers flowed readily. As I was sweating profusely, I’d write a line in a booklet, jump to another booklet and write a line there, then come back to the first booklet to finish a sentence I had started earlier. Oh, boy! It was crazy. I’d never seen my handwriting more hideous. Simply, calligraphy had evaded me.
Somehow, I concluded those two essays just as the invigilators said time was up. I arranged my booklets and followed a queue to the front of the lecture hall, where everyone submitted stand by stand. You’d submit a booklet at a stand, move to the next stand and submit another booklet, on and on like that until you’d submitted all booklets, ten of them.
At the last stand, I submitted an empty booklet, a properly blank one. I believe whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stranger. The invigilator by the stand raised his head up in shock, his eyes wide with disbelief.
“Hahaha. You dunno. You dunno waz going on,” I thought.
With the I-can’t-kill-myself facial expression, respectfully, I shrugged my shoulders and left the hall.
Outside, I saw fellow medical students who were done with their papers, too. A good number of them looked really fucked-up like me.
“I’m not alone, after all,” I reassured myself. “At this point, only God can ‘safe’ us.”
~~~ His Royal Awesomeness, Lord Simult.
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