MOVING ON
You have waited for over four months for your bar finals result. It is the result that qualifies you to practice as a lawyer in Nigeria. You are in no doubt about your passing but you do not know what grade it will be.
It is a Friday evening. You have been unavailable on Whatsapp. You come online in the evening to meet unread texts on your law school group page. You see that the latest news about your result is that it will be out later that night. You brush it off as another unreliable news, another opportunity for the pranksters to raise the hope of students who are overly eager to see their results. After all, haven’t they spread similar news and nothing ever came from it?
You go about your other daily activities. It is past 10 pm when someone sends a link to the page. Another colleague confirms that it is genuine this time. You do not believe still. You chill. Later you tell yourself to find out since it is inevitable anyways. You check the site, hoping for the best, praying for the best and then you see the result. Your whole body trembles. Your eyes tear up. How can this be? It is not even your worst attainable result. It is not a result you have ever imagined getting in your twenty-two years of existence.
You run to your room in disbelief. You tell your little sister while trembling that the result is out and it is more than disappointing. You storm out into the other room and attempt to cry. While you shove your face in a pillow, the tears don’t come. At that point, you feel strengthened. Strengthened to thank God for the results because at least you passed.
You want to run away from social media but you don’t. Instead, you act like all is well and you make light of the situation. And it really makes you feel better. You have conversations, receive some calls, miss some others, post on Twitter and feel absolutely energized. You cannot contain the excitement, most of your ‘students’ passed as well and it is consolation for you. One of your best girls is among the five people who made a first class. Actually, three of the people who make a first are from your school and class and you are so proud of them.
You do not sleep until 4 am. In fact, you can not sleep. You have to force yourself to sleep. But before you sleep, your excitement is replaced by some sort of tiredness. You suddenly feel empty, hollow. the doubts begin to creep in.
You wake up on Saturday to a feeling of deep sadness. You wear a frown and you are quite irritable. You ignore many calls and texts. Those asking “so what exactly did you get? Tell me it’s a red scroll”. You begin to feel inadequate. You begin to doubt yourself. You see a tweet about a person who made a 2'1. The person says he is sure it is because of the charges he missed. You wonder how he can tell because sincerely, you cannot place your hands on what exactly went wrong. You wonder, did I write a wrong examination number? You know you had been quite meticulous about that, checking your exam slip and the corresponding number every now and then. You wonder if they lost your extra sheet in one of the courses. If you had mistakenly shaded civil for corporate or a similar mistake. You wonder if they had marked a wrong answer and ignored the right one. If you had indeed written off point hence the grades. You wonder what course(s) is responsible for this. You wonder about a lot of things.
Then you see the breakdown of the results. You see that no one from your campus made a first. You are hurt. You remember the pain and suffering you went through. You remember the long classes, the darkness you endured, the lack of water, the inconveniences. You see that now it was kind of futile. You feel like you should have played more. But you played. Although never in your life have you read the way you did in the Nigerian law school, yet it did not yield you the first you desired or even the fall back 2'1 you would have managed. You begin to question your LLB results because these two results no too balance!
You see that Abuja people excelled more than others. You begin to think, “what if I had been posted to Abuja?”…the what-ifs are many, the doubts are raging, the anger and pain become quite unbearable. You remember making covenants with God. You never once thought it would end in hot tears…but it did and boy did you cry premium tears. You sob like a baby at that moment.
You cry your heart and eyes out and then begin to encourage yourself in the Lord as David did. David was a strong man. Your senior friends call and text to encourage you. But really you don’t want encouragement. It only makes you feel more pained. More like you have failed. They throw all the motivational talks at you and it makes you think about how you ended up in this shoe because you never would have imagined. You begin to hope that it is untrue, unreal; that the results will change. In fact, you check it three times and it is the same.
Your friend chats you up pouring out love to you. You are honest with him. He ends the conversation with “have you prayed?” and you know it is what you should do. For although you have thanked God for the result and prayed about it, you did so hoping for a miracle. Now, you need to pray for His peace. Pray for the strength to forge on, For the grace to move forward.
Your uncle says you still look hurt from the result. You tell him that you are but that you will be fine. You will move on. You tell him that moving on takes time. Your first step to moving on is writing about the pain. You hope this helps someone. You really do.
