I CAN still vividly remember my first day as a student at the Polytechnic of Namibia. It was almost like coming from Earth and landing on Mars. For me, who left my Grade 12 classroom more than twenty years ago and am now taking up studies again, it was most probably the biggest challenge in life I was forced to adapt to. If I was asked then how to cope with some of these “born frees” in the same class it would have been difficult to respond.
Today I can attest that not only do these young ones respect you as an elder but they fully accept and appreciate you as a fellow student and someone to look up to. Well, it’s now almost eight months later and what a wonderful time I’ve experienced as a first-year student at the Polytechnic of Namibia.
The day I received the first-semester timetable at Poly I suddenly realized that these studies will demand absolute commitment and sacrifices if one wants to achieve success at the end of the day.
Imagine a working man with a family now all of a sudden having only weekends reserved for leisure and family. Leaving home in the morning to work and only returning close to ten o’ clock at night has now become a pattern of my life from Monday to Thursday. In all honesty, I have to admit that it was damn difficult and complicated in the beginning to strike a perfect balance between work, studies and family.
The deadlines to be met at work, family issues to be resolved at home and assignments/tests to be passed at school now collectively demand my undivided attention.
As a human being it was at times not possible for me to answer to all these demands, resulting that one of these three areas has been neglected somewhere, somehow.
It was only during the start of the second semester that I found the fuse to properly connect with my studies. We as fellow students in class have now become more acquainted with each other and solid interpersonal relationships have been established. As an added bonus one of our favourite lecturers (Ms Unoverse) returned to the scene, re-igniting these flames of passion for studies even further.
Believe it or not, even now at university we’ve developed a culture of fierce competition in our group in order to outperform one another. It was again like the old school days when one will wait in feverish anticipation for your results after writing a test or completing an assignment.
The good thing that resulted from this is that we are now all highly motivated to study very hard for our end of the year examinations and prove that we will achieve success.
Time has passed with me coming to the end of my first year of attending classes.
I will definitely endeavour to the best of my ability to pass my subjects (maybe with a distinction or two) and advance to my second year in 2015.
Until a next time, Eewa