The sun was already high when I woke up with a jolt. I grabbed my phone, checked the time, and my heart sank. Subhana Allah! It was past eleven, and my exam was scheduled to start at nine. I had slept through the very thing I stayed up all night preparing for.
I could remember joking with my friend that morning, on our way back from a night class, about the possibility of missing the exam because of lack of sleep. The plan was to get to my hostel, take my bath, and rush out, because I knew I could easily sleep off. And since I didn’t stay with any of my course mates off-campus, there’d be no one to wake me. I even told the friend to call me if she didn’t see me in class before the exam. She did. My phone rang. I woke up, answered the call, told her I’d stand up, and then went straight back to bed.
I jumped out of bed and threw on my clothes without even bathing or brushing my teeth. I sprayed a lot of perfume to hide both my stench and my fear, if not my sleepy face. I bolted out of my hostel after spraying the perfume, running as if my whole life depended on it. It did. The exam is pathology, one of the “woe-bearing Ps” of medical school. This was 400 level, the hardest level of medical school. I needed every mark I could get to cross the level in a single sitting.
As I ran, I prayed over and over that the exam wouldn’t be over yet and that I’d be allowed into the hall. Two prayers. The distance from my hostel to school isn’t that far, but that day it felt like it was farther than from Ilorin to Lagos. The keke riders didn’t help matters either. Those guys won’t move unless they have a complete set of passengers. You either pay for all the seats or wait till the tricycle is full. Thankfully, I met a woman I knew on seat. She is a coursemate’s mother. She didn’t just comfort me, she paid my transport fare and prayed that I’d be allowed into the hall.
I arrived at the exam hall panting and close to tears. My colleagues were still on the second part of the paper. I could see them scribbling furiously with their pens. The exam had a multiple-choice question section and an essay writing section. Since only the second section required extensive writing, it didn’t take a genius to realise the section of the exam that they were on. Considering how late I was, it’s a miracle I met the exams. One of my prayers had been answered.
My second prayer was half answered. I was allowed in to write only the part I had missed without any extra time. My entrance was even because one of my lecturers pleaded on my behalf. The university regulations state that a candidate must be in the exam hall 30 minutes before the start of the exam, but I arrived 30 minutes before the end! Because of that, I wasn’t supposed to be allowed in at all. But they allowed me in. I wrote the exam. The result came out. Guess my score.
As narrated by: Abubakar Labaika (Ilorin, Nigeria).
This snippet is published as part of the series, Surviving Medical School.
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