We're killing ourselves

I'm sitting in my office, right behind me young men and women are registering for courses for the new academic year 2007/08.

I work as a contractor (have my own company and all) for a college, Lewisham college, here in London. I'm working on improving and increasing their presence on the web.

Up until i heard about Turin passing on, i never gave a second thought to all the students i see around me, but now i take a look at them really hard. We were once like that, really young, so much hope, so many dreams. We all hard worked hard to get into university and when we did we felt fulfilled yeah, a new life begins we thought, no matter how difficult the country looked. We all felt at least we'd come this far and we could now make something of our otherwise bleak looking future.

There's no difference, i think, to our registration, students walking around with different coloured forms, looking lost, asking everybody around them which way to go, and giving you a "don't you know your job?" look, if you said you didn't know. There is one difference though, Organisation, this place is organised to a T. Every member of staff has been briefed, re-briefed than briefed again for good measure on what to expect, how to react and what to do in every single circumstance, even me, who's work has nothing to do directly with students had to attend meetings and pull some shifts to assist with the enrollment process. They know exactly how many students are enrolling this year, there are enough forms, enough staff, enough everything.
In our time it was war, i remember queing for hours on end, fighting to keep my place on the que, i remember one guy fainting from lack of oxygen in the corridor we were queing in. It was horrible.
I remember some people been sent back home because of one missing form or the other and that was the end of school for them, they had to go try again next year. Over here that cannot happen, the school will do everything it can to get you a place. As long as you've walked through the school doors and you said, "i want to study" they'll find you a place.

What would it cost the education authorities in Naija to ensure things are done properly, they all went to school, they all had some sort of training, they know their jobs (well some of them) and they can do it. But they don't, they allow student to suffer unecessarily for no reason.

After going through that horrible registration process you then had to endure 4+x years of missing results, crazy assignments and terrible living conditions. You now finally finish and some guy with a gotee says you can't graduate because of some beaf he has on how cool your accent is or some other inconsequential reason.

Please i ask our parents, teachers and leaders, this has to stop. We really need to wake up to our responsibility, we're killing ourselves....

....Killing ourselves.....