According to literature
opinions of late, saying ‘I have a
dream…’ brings out a lighter message than ‘I have an ambition…” in the context of striving for attainment. The
argument goes beyond to consider what the audience understands, rather than
just what the communicator intended to mean. It is said that dreams come to
someone’s mind especially when they are sleeping or just about to. They are
usually less significant to the subject and are quickly forgotten once one
quits the slumber unless they were nightmares. On the other hand, an ambition
is normally used for a desired achievement which makes it a better term than a
dream, at least according to me.
Long time ago, I had an ambition. A desire to be of good service to myself, my people, my community, my country and the world in general. All these amounted to the final destinations of my life struggle which necessitated the proper formulation of strategies. After all, in order to reach somewhere, one must pass through somewhere else. I always heard it from different opinion-holders that once you get to the university, you have succeeded in life. As a small child, too young to criticize, I was meant to meekly believe this and subsequently subscribed to this opinion. The university therefore became my academic focal point and I invested so much effort on it than Heaven itself. I was driven by the question of, ‘if people are there, why not me?’
Another factor that significantly raised my already high desire of one day being a university student was the immense demand from family, relatives, friends and former teachers. All these groups of people were for the opinion that if I do not work hard and get to the university, I would have failed them completely. It came to a point when I started wondering whether I am the only child or student with that potential ability. I loved listening to people’s narratives about university experience and I almost, but never, questioned whether some of them were true or realistic. Most of the narrators were people I knew that they have been to a university, whether as students, having attended a student’s graduation ceremony or merely having had a chance to visit a university student in the past. However, there were those whom I would always try to puzzle out where they sourced such stories from, because as far as I knew, they had never been to such an institution. Just to suppress such doubts, I suspected that a university must be a very desirable place if people talk about it like heaven and they have never been there.
Narrowing down to my specific choice, Moi University is the one whose beauty first presented itself to me. I loved Moi right from the day I learnt how to search for information over the Internet. The institution’s website looks wonderful on the homepage – I must confess. The corporate green color, moving text and the alternating graphic-enhanced headlines looked attractive to my eyes. I did not know how to follow the links on the page, so I left the site and went ahead to ‘Google’ for Moi University images. This is where I spent hours smiling. There was the Moi University Administration and Senate Building which looked similar to my imaginative Paradise. Margaret Thatcher Library was just enough to clinch my search but before taking leave of the page, I noticed something very interesting. I saw some pathways which I had to conduct a double-confirmation to ascertain that they are really found in the institution. They were decorated with vegetation on either sides and these plants produced differently-colored leaves. I knew I had just made the right choice. This was during the period between the release of K.C.S.E results and revision of courses exercise. I did not even bother about the exercise because I thought I had already made an upright decision.
29th August, 2011 was the official opening date as was indicated on my admission form. However, due to forgivable reasons which the institution knows well, the date was quickly changed and fell on 14th July the same year, a notice that was communicated via the newspaper which every Kenyan ought to have read, at least for that specific communication. I did not. I got the message a couple of days later. It was purely due to my ignorance and therefore I found no reason to blame any other party whatsoever. Quick arrangements had to be made and effected as demanded. Thanks to the amazing grace of the Lord, I got ready for and landed on the university within the first week.
This is the time when the reality of theoretical university experience unfolded. I began to distinguish the truth from true lies. The first statement that I disqualified came from one of my former teachers unfortunately. ‘Study hard to achieve a good grade, go to the university, enjoy your life and get a degree in the process…’ With all the confusion that I normally face, this can never be true; simultaneous lectures, signing nominal roles and class attendance lists, circulating course registration forms for lecturers’ signatures, voluminous notes, individual and group assignments, unpredictable class sit-in CATs and lengthy examinations – just to mention a few. This is not to mean that challenges are only found under academics. There are also social, financial, environmental and individual tests that I really do not want to highlight. To cut a long story short, the university, like any other place, has numerous challenges that one ought to face if anything good has to become of them.
The opinion that getting to the university means succeeding in life also seems too far away from the truth. There are cases where students misbehave in campus and are eventually expelled. This calls for self-discipline as one carries him/herself around campus. Still, continuous below-average performance can lead to a student being discontinued, which means that one must work very hard to avoid such an embarrassment. In other cases, students have failed to complete their studies due to inability to raise fees and the most terrific is when a student unfortunately passes on in the process of pursuing a course. In this logic, it is quite evident that being enrolled in a university is not the final step towards success. Even if you successfully complete your course and graduate, you may just find yourself joining a multitude of serious graduates as well as job-seekers. The biggest worry that a university student should therefore have is the question of, ‘what special quality do I possess that will attract an employer to me at the expense of the rest?’
Therefore, ‘I still have an ambition…”A desire to gain favors from the Almighty and become someone worth mentioning in the near future. Hard work continues…
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