RESPIRATORY DISTRESS

                 RESPIRATORY DISTRESS
         So it’s 3:55AM and for some reason that continues to elude me, I have decided to close my textbooks (with an S) to write this piece. Not because I have the time, nor I can feel the words ringing in my ears, but because I have only about 12 hours to the biggest examination in my life yet, and I want to tell you something about respiratory distress.
                OK, lemme give you the background story, Respiratory Physiology was supposed to be fun (If you’re yet to do it, PLEASE MAKE SURE IT IS FUN TO YOU) One is supposed to learn how oxygen is taken into the body, and carbon(IV)oxide is released, coupled with everything in between, the diseases, complications, control and regulation even the magical stuff I simply cannot explain. But here I am, 12 hours to “kick off time” and I just realized I did not have fun with this stuff.
           Starting from when the lecturer was walking around the class like a Lagos Traffic Warden and he somehow managed to see my steady blue slides, and he said in the coldest-I-am-in-charge-voice he could muster that “You don’t wear slippers to my class, this is a college, not a playground.” Or to the week after, when I jejely decided to go plug my laptop in the college library ( I  have not had light in my apartment for one month, have you?) and I came back to meet a host of people standing at the door, initially, I thought they just decided to have “the corridor experience” ooo, not knowing that my dear lecturer had closed the door, just 5 minutes after he entered….see me see wahala ooo…to now pepper my sores, he decided to take one James Bond attendance, claiming it’s worth 5 marks. Then, to crown it all up. The next week, he asked a question in class, just a question and nothing much happened except that everyone was dazed! And my oga-at-the-top said “physiology you don’t know, anatomy, you don’t know, what do you people know sef?” My people, I tell you, It took every atom of self will in my body to not burst out in laughter at that moment.
              So, what’s my point? SIMPLE – FEAR PUSHES YOU – you just have to channel it the right way. After five weeks of this class, it became quite obvious to all of us that if something did not change drastically, we were all going to fail, terribly. So what did the wise ones among us (yours faithfully included) do, we dropped our egos, dusted our books, and in my case, cleaned our goggles, sat down, and STUDIED.SIMPLE. Now, the exam is just less than half a day away, but I know, we know we will scale through this one, just like the others, simply because we did not sit back, bury our heads in the sand like the Ostrich to hide from our fears, but we stood strong, bent our backs, burnt the candles, because we all fear failure.
         FEAR…it’s perfectly natural, be scared, be worried, but what matters most is how well we can channel this fear, make it positive, build on the positives, work through it…and soon you’d  be singing the victory song.
Like I will, once I leave that exam hall.
Thanks A-Plenty
#SHALLA