They have seen nothing yet.… In our days no one has conceived anything great; it is for me to set the example.’ Those fantasies of glory every schoolboy has—they could be made real!
This was what came to mind on 16th August, 2012 inside the Central Class Block auditorium as my classmates and I sat awaiting our scrolls of successes. As we sat next to each other we realized the smiles we share could probably be the last smiles between us. We felt much more like family in four years such that separation was a bitter pill, and indeed hard to welcome.
Later that day as I and my family took our way home, I felt something was missing in my life- and then the thought of the change; change in daily activities, friends, roommates and even menu. It was this time that I realized the people that I use to meet in the faculty, Halls, Mecca road were not busy bees that were just crossing each other’s path, but the spice that could fill what I am missing now.
Even though we were in the same department attend the same lectures, we were each different with different images to hold. Some of us were the jet set world of witty conversations, the latest styles, the dress, the terms, the friends all telling stories of our identities and dogma. I still remember the buzzing in the halls; the share glances and funs during lectures that make some of us look on as if we were outsiders looking in.
For as long as I could remember, I had always wanted to study in a top class university in Ghana, and for me that was KNUST. I had an idea then. And I thought I knew what I wanted a university degree to give me- A career as fixed and as calmly brilliant as the North Star.
The experience on KNUST do not nurture this thought. The university influenced me. For obvious reasons in my four years on Campus, I know I didn’t talk much, didn’t play much, much more like a loner, but read a lot, reflected a lot.
In classrooms, we were generally taught to name, classify, to arrange things logically or understand some processes. Teaching was by reciting notes and giving handouts; learning by way of memorizing and religiously reproducing them on exam papers. This was the only way academic success could be guaranteed in KNUST.
To some point I felt guilty when I start to think about all the money that my parents spent for me to come to the university. Then I realized they wanted me to be happy. That is why they spent all that money to see if this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. And today more than ever before, I feel glad; I feel glad that somehow I have learnt the thin line between knowledge and success.
I might have forgotten everything I learnt in the classroom, but at least I am happy I have forgotten, because that is better than if I had not learned them at all. I know that science heroes spent hours in space, lab or test centres to discover a thing or two; I have remained in this world for close to thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek knowledge far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each lesson I have learned, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.
To the last, I made a discovery; and in fact my greatest success at KNUST was not the scroll I receive on graduation, no! But the discovery I made. It was not a scientific discovery but to me it is worth far more than finding out that the earth is oval in shape. I discovered the authentic me. And it is in this discovery that I found that continent of undiscovered potential and the gem, the inborn capacity, the latent ability in me that I could not buy with money but education.
