Thursday, February 09, 2006

My First Day of Class (Writing II) Second Semester Class was Quiz Day!

Although my second semester did not really excite so much compared to my first semester, I still found some little things that gave me joy.
Writing II, WRI 102 was the second semester course that excited me the most and here shown at the left is my instructor Prof Amy Greene.

Naturally, I like writing and it was one of my hobies, maybe because I am naturally tacturn, and so like to be heard from what I put down on black and white.

I dreaded this course because it was gonna be tougher, compared to WRI 101 of the previous semester. The course excited me the most because I was having a new faculty (Prof Amy Greene) who had just joined the university.

The memory of my first day of her class still linger in my mind. That day really prooved that the course wasn't really going to be easy. On that day of class, she gave the class a complex topic to write on as our in class assingment after she, and all of us had introduced ourselves. We were asked to write on which one of these is more important, "MEMORY" and "REALITY" under 5 minutes just before class discussion of the topic. This was quite shoking, you know. Quiz on the first day of class?!
It looked like a bombshell that hit not just me alone but the 18 students in that class.
It seemed awkward a topic to write on at first.
How can one compare memory and reality?, I thought.

As the first minute was gone, whe announced that it was four minutes left and even then, no one had yet started writing anything. She mentioned that we should write our thinking and that it was all she require from us to do.

Oh, I seemed to have got the logic. I shuld write anything I think. "None is more important", I thought. I began to put my thought on the paper we were given. Believe me, it was the toughtest quiz I had come across in AAUN.

This morning, as I came across my script, I feel so happy that I could write a good piece like this under five minutes. I still doubt the Reality that I wrote it. But my memory is not that poor that I have forgotten so soon that I wrote it. After all, my name is there and the date is there too, my first day of the second semester class.

Memory and Reality: None is more important

Memory is the recall of a stored information. It could be natural such as when it is the brain that is involved in it or it could be artificial, e.g. computer memory.

Reality can be seen as something that has a possiblilty of occuring or has once occured.

On comparing memory and reality, we can find that there is no solid basis for comparison. Hence, hard to understatnd, if not impopssible which is more important.

In my opinion, each is as important as the other. Memory is important in knowing the time, place and generally, the details of an event. It helps one to know what the scene of an event is like. I remember when I was small and I was required to draw water before going to school every morning. This was because we lived in an area where tap water was very rare. On growing up and in this civilized world, we have seen that individuals now sink their bore holes and can get water. so the event of my old days is not quite easy to remember and somehow there seemed not be need for it. This is because man tends to live by the moment and that is reality. It now appears that my experience while young is becoming abstract and not real.

We can now see that it is easy to think that reality is in this case the most important. For anyone whol thinks this is true, I would like to say that the experience of an event (memory) calls for one to live at the moement - reality. Just as the hostorians would say, "history is what makes people know where they belong and where they are heeding to."

We can now see that Memory and Reality are two intertwined comcepts.

Friday, February 03, 2006

Ode To the First Class

Once upon a time, there lived an old man. In those old days, he knew that you would be schooling in the best university in Africa. He anticipated the challenges you were to meet from the future as a moment from the past. This challenges he relayed in his poem, "the purpose of the American Education."

At that time, he was a student and with the birth of an American University in the sub-sahara africa, he has come to offer advice to the fresh man class.

The experience he relays is not the past education wheich he received in his old days but he himself in the past imagining the future and what he looked forward to was not also the future in itself but himself in the future, retrieving the bone he buried in the past.

The old man, A masked Mystery Student I was, as I welcomed the Second Batch of the first class students with an ode (a lyric poem):

The purpose of the American Education

From the deep mist of your distant location
I sensed your coming.
From your enthusiastic preparations
I knew you were anxious to be here.
Because never has there been this kind of pedagogy
In this part of the continent

I noticed your moves
Right from when you set out
To get your flight ticket booked
Till the moment you landed at the Yola airport.
I even greeted you,
But in disguise
Because, you would run away.

As the angel of protection
Sitting by your side there in the school bus,
I lead your way to this academic Eldora do;
The school of your dream.

As we journeyed together,
I pointed at those tourist monuments;
Those high hills that characterizes this state
And the gentle flowing river that runs the under bridges.
Never has there been such an adventurous journey.

I knew that you were to encounter a change.
A change from memory retention ability to reasoning ability
And I remember vividly that I told you,
But you would not listen.
The imagination of a new university life pre-occupied your heart.

However, I knew you never thought the voice could make a meaning.
Why be distracted at the core of a blissful moment?
When you had just realized that you are a member of
The first class of freshman student,
in the first styled American University in Sub-Sahara African
After us, being one of the 200 students in a World Class University,
is about the greatest rare privilege any young adult can have.


And as we stepped into the school,
I assisted you in moving your luggage from the school bus
There I was, in your room making you feel comfortable and welcomed
You still would not notice me
Because you were so overwhelmed with the facilities you saw around

Even when I mention the word change.
You wondered what it was, that you heard
But I knew you heard it quite well
So I left you to puzzle over it.
But you still could not make anything out of this
I had better not told you

In the following day, I appeared and smiled
And said welcome and be prepared for a change
You heard me quite well again this time
You still would not understand
Because it was a strange voice as I choose to still remain invisible
You weren’t scared anyway
Since it was all a lovely scene
There was no doubt that you enjoyed it all
But you would continue to imagine

In three weeks time I heard you say
I can’t get through everything;
Assignments after every class
Such was the change.
You complained of managing you time effectively
So as not to be late for each class
Or leave certain assignments undone
Such was the change
And you also complained of
Writing reflection paper on the humanity courses.
Papers of at least 1,200 words.
Such was the change; the desired change.
You have to think critically
And this is the purpose of the American Education.
Teaching you to think critically
And put down your thoughts on black and white

Dear student, you've heard from the old man - a mentor.
Lets wake up to face the challenge before us because AAUN is an academic battle. A child that did not go to a battle field will become weak, even physically.