The joy of being a University of Maiduguri graduate

University of Maiduguri is one of such institutions that present one with a peculiar and spectacular narrative. Being a student of this university best explains the saying that ‘to get the prize, you need to pay the price.’
 From the moment a student steps into the university, he will find himself in another world. This is because the weather, the landscape and the people are so different.
 The word ‘stress’ is synonymous with a University of Maiduguri undergraduate student. A lot of factors combine to make the life of a student a living stress ranging from registration, queuing up to collect forms, to submit forms, paying school fees, signing courses, registering online, and also queuing up on the counter and ATM to pay and withdraw money, mostly under the harsh attention of the scorching sun.
 Just like some other institutions, a student will come face-to-face with no-nonsense lecturers who scare the living hell out of students with their words and the authority they exact in lecturing and distribution of continous assessment (C.A) and examination marks.
Some popular words you will hear in the university are ‘no time’, in fact ‘no time to check time.’ Things are done at a heated pace, assignments are submitted within a short period of time, and students work round the clock to make sure they come out with the best results possible.
 The trend of hard work is ubiquitously worn as sleeves by the students who have proven time after time that intelligence alone is not enough to achieve success.
 People often wonder how it is possible that students manage to study under the prevailing harsh conditions. The weather is always extreme either way, whether it is hot or cold. You can literally see the reactive frustration on the face of students trekking under the heated sun or standing on an ATM queue to withdraw money often to feed themselves.
Coupled with this is the issue of insecurity. Students have been scared out of their skin on more than a handful of occasions. In fact, it got to a point where the sound of bomb-blast became like video games.
 The event of March 14, 2014 remains an unforgettable one in the minds of students at the time. Students had to stay at home for up to three months due to insurgency.
 With everything that a student of the university has to go through, one paramount thing is that every student must pass all their courses which could run between sixty to one hundred courses for their entire stay in the university. But as they say, the sweets come after the sweats. A graduate of University of Maiduguri becomes tested enough to face the harsh conditions of the outer world. Final year students express this joy in the most fascinating manner.
 When it’s all been said and done, change which is inevitable comes to mind. While everyone has to move on, and the world might look scary and intimidating, it is nothing compared to what the students have experienced and learned in school. The friends, the money, the love, the twists and turns, the failures and successes only serve to make the students thoughtful, strong and grateful. This is the joy of graduating from University of Maiduguri.
Madaki is a final year student of Mass Communication, University of Maiduguri