THE AVERAGE FOURTH-YEAR...

By Shiku Ngigi

- Is on his last semester of his 8-4-4 and age is catching up. Either that or he has thrown caution to the wind. He has no idea what courses he’s taking. If he has, he has no knowledge of their titles, leave alone their codes. He never missed classes in earlier years but today, attending lectures is the exception, not the rule.
-Will remember that registration forms are filled on the day before exams, she will then scribble on some course registration form very fast, forge the signatures then fill in an examination course form. It will then hit her that she has not paid her fee yet. She’ll rush to that tiny National Bank and stand in an endless line. Back in the day, she paid her fee a month before the opening date, a good faithful freshman.
-Does not study for CATs. There is a reason they are Continuous Assessment Tests, right? You walk in there like a man (woman) and fill the paper with that massive knowledge that cannot be attained from books. With age comes great confidence and a full disk space up in your head. Also, the rumour that lecturers don’t mark papers but play the ‘picky picky ponky’ game to grade papers has got to his head. Therefore, whether he reads or not, he’ll likely get the same marks (bad move).
-Is a wealth of knowledge stored in cartons of hand-outs and disks of soft copies; a walking repository. If I were you, I’d grab the nearest senior’s hand and request her to unload all these printouts and files into your flash disks and files.
-Will have spent an average of 6000/- on the electric contraptions commonly known as coils in campus. She has also acquired the skills to tap electricity from naked wires and steal fluorescent tubes from the kitchens and washrooms when the one in her room is burnt out.
-Was here during the infamous 2009 strike, the Mashoka era and the invention of long holidays which redefined the very age-old meaning of long. The pseudo-fourth years out there have gone on a longer one. Let’s just say their successors may go on one that will clock 12 months. And Moi University will once again break its own record!
-Remembers with nostalgia the days she could walk into the library with her laptop bag so that it would not get stolen by some nitwit at the entrance. Better still, her laptop would not find its way to the hard floor after dropping from her hands while she walked up those flights of stairs.
-Has a whole new wardrobe. Her skirts are shorter, her pants tighter and her shoes higher. Show her a picture of herself back in 2009, she will laugh and say that she was “innocent” and “naïve”. Ask me what she was, I will tell you. She was herself.
-Has been rejected by enough ladies, he is now immune. In fact, he just chats them up for fun nowadays. If she says yes, he might just be shocked into a cardiac arrest!
-Just recently learnt how it feels to be inside a Moi University bus. Destination, Mombasa (I wonder how no other destination tickles students’ fancy as much as this place). He came back darker and relaxed only to scowl at the ‘Karibu Umefika’ signpost. Life has to go on.
-Is staring at his research project wondering how time flew so fast. Part of him wants to be out of here, the other wants to hang around a bit. He needs to have a bit more fun before he gets out there to give the world what he’s got. All the same, he’s already got his clearance form and gathered half the signatures required. And no, he will not tarmac. Opportunities galore out there, he has it all figured out. Wait and see.