Love, Loss and Lecture Notes
By Sekinat Abdulwakil
Ah, Week 8. The magical midpoint where hopes fade, tempers rise, and everyone collectively realizes that this semester wasn't playing with anybody. The energy on campus has shifted. You can practically taste the fear in the air; seasoned with impending doom, failure and broken promises.
Welcome to the official pre-apocalypse known as Test Season. It’s not exam week yet, but the tension was thick enough to make your mind feel like it was overheating, like a phone charging too long. You start seeing people who haven’t been to class all semester now fighting for front seats and asking the lecturer, that smart student and anybody who seems to know more than them questions they don’t understand.
The library is full, not because people are reading, but because everyone is trying to pretend they have their life together. People walk around with textbooks they haven’t opened, highlighting random lines just to feel something. You sit there, staring at one page for twenty minutes, not because it’s hard, but because your brain is buffering. You scroll through your phone, check TikTok or Twitter (sorry, X. I was trying not to remind you of your relationship on the way to its end), open the same PDF again, and convince yourself that “at least I showed up.” And honestly? That’s enough for today.
Meanwhile, relationships are gasping for air. The couples that once held hands during lectures now hold their printed course material, if they have one, and regrets. Dates have been postponed until further notice. “Let’s go out” has been replaced with “Let’s go for TDB,” which is really code for “I will ignore you while I try to inhale words.”
Campus group chats are more active than the students. Suddenly, everyone is asking for the Google Drive links, course materials and past questions like breadcrumbs on the road to salvation. Questions like “what did he say in class that day?” echo across the land. Some will read, some will guess, and some will look heavenward, waiting for heavenly intervention or just end up whispering, “God abeg.”
Everyone is now suspiciously serious. The same person who used to stroll into class late or has snaps of herself in Lagos when everyone is in class now has a timetable, a reading lamp, and anxiety. Study groups are forming left and right—some actually read, others just gist and end up watching TikToks about people reading. But it doesn’t matter. At least you showed up. Sometimes, surviving the semester is just about being present enough to say, “I tried.”
There’s no shame anymore. People who once laughed at the smart girl are now in everyone's DMs asking for “summary of Week 5 to 7.” Pride is on break. Everyone is now humble, hopeful, and hanging on by a very thin thread. And honestly? That thread is doing its best.
Let’s not forget the chaos agents: the students who read only the night before the test and somehow still score an A. You? You copied their strategy and now nothing looks familiar and you're discovering things in the exam hall. But it’s not your fault. You were misled by vibes and misplaced confidence.
Extracurriculars have entered their rest. The girls who are members of every association and club in the school? She’s now glued to PDFs with eyebags bigger than her tote bag. The girls who attend every party in Ibadan, are hoping one more past question will save him. Clubs, fellowships, committees, they all go silent. This is no longer a semester. It’s a survival game.
So if you see someone crying over a quiz they didn’t know was today, give them a nod. You’re next.
Good luck.
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