Tolerance Showed Me Pepper! But Then...

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ThisIsEngineering


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Life is hard.

If there is one thing I have noticed is that no one believes they are wicked. As a matter of fact, everyone believes they are in the right all the time. People can admit to being selfish, greedy, strict, and even disrespectful. But no one will ever admit to being wicked. And this is because the kind of things that they do which others might consider wicked, to them is just a normal thing.

And when such a thing is happening, you will find yourself almost going mad while you wonder how a human being like you can be so heartless and inhumane. But meanwhile, in their minds, it is just another Tuesday.

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The story I am about to tell you happened over the course of just about a year, that is from the middle of 2020 to the middle of 2021. And it was between a senior lecturer in my school and I.

As we all remember, 2020 was the year the Coronavirus took the world by storm, and everywhere went under lockdown. From places of worship to schools and clubs. There were more or less zero movements.

It was no different for my school. We went home, expecting the lockdown to be over in two weeks or thereabout. I went to my village seeing as it was closer to my school than my base in Lagos and it was in the same state as I was, the plan was to camp there and once the lockdown was over I would return to school. Easy-peasy.

But then, the lockdown started going on for way too long. Months were crawling by and we were no closer to resuming school.

It was during this period that my school authorities decided that while they could not hold physical classes, they would do it online. But their online class was dead on arrival, no one was interested at all; both students and lecturers. But other activities kicked off to a great start. It was during the lockdown that my department was divided into tiny groups so that we could begin working on our project.

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Linkedin Sales Navigator

My coursemate and I were assigned to a senior lecturer so that we would begin working on our projects. But my coursemate was in Lagos, while I was still in Owerri, so it was up to me to communicate with the man.

During this time, the lockdown was lifted slightly but schools were yet to resume( either due to strike or still the pandemic, I am not sure again), I would go from my village to this man’s office only to find out he was not there. It is not as if I did not call him, when I did he would question me that how was he going to organize a project over the phone? That I should come and see him at once.

So, I would drop whatever I was doing and go to school. He would not be there, when I call, he would ask me if he told me he was in school. That don’t I know there was Covid?

Yeah… very exasperating.

When I politely asked where we could meet, he would say it has to be in the school. That it would have to be another day.

It went on like this for a couple of times until I gave up and swore that unless schools resumed, I was not calling his number.

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Moose Photos

Then, schools resumed.

By this time, some of my other coursemates had already started working on their projects and the date had already been set for the defense. But we were even yet to select a topic. Well, my partner and I started trying again. Now that school was in session, we met him in his office and we selected a topic. Mind you this selection took more than a week.

Now that we had the topic, to begin the project, he directed us to his own engineer. That was the engineer we were to use and nothing else. And the engineer’s workshop was far from our school, so we shuffle from school to the workshop sometimes three times a week. We spent weeks hassling for the price, and then some more weeks hassling for the days we would be coming and how long the project would take. Any suggestion the man brought, the lecturer would counter it. Like, if you were not going to accept what he was saying why did you send us to him?

It got so bad that my partner and I started considering changing our supervisor; we had even started talking to other lecturers. The thing was that he was a senior lecturer and such a thing would never happen without his go-ahead. And if he found out we were trying it, it could spell doom for us.

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Andrea Piacquadio

Because of that, we were careful around the man. Smiling peevishly even when he was working us to the bone. It was in front of us that he canceled a student’s practical score. And in my school, no practical score meant failure in that course. So we were scared of him, that was why we were keeping our decamping secret and moving it at an extremely slow pace.

Soon, however, defense day began to draw closer and we had not even started. And to make matters worse, he and the engineer he had referred us to got into a conflict. It was bad enough that the money we had sent to the engineer, he sent it back to us. That was how bad it was. And we were back at square one.

My partner and I were lost, we did not know what to do. We were going to fail just because of one man.

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Genaro Servin

When it was barely two weeks to the defense day, we went to the man to ask him the way forward seeing as we could not just go to any engineer. We told him that the deadline was approaching and we still had nothing to show for it. That was when he exclaimed, he did not know that the defense was so close.

There and then, he gave us a manual and told us to study it. We used the manual and built an automatic changeover switch. It was so easy, and we had all the tools needed. The ones we did not have, we bought. We finished it just in time, with only a few days to spare. Then we prepared our report. It was the night before that our report was finally printed and ready. And it was in the morning of the defense that the cover was branded with our names.

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We dressed up and rushed to school with others. And now, let me burst your brain. We did not do the defense that day! The man could not make it, so he shifted our own to the next week. But he assured us that so long we were under him we should not fear. That we were not going to fail.

When the time eventually reached, we did not even have to do the defense. He just made sure the automatic changeover switch was working perfectly and he scored us. When the results came out, we both got an A.

It is difficult to reconcile the rocky beginning we had with this man with this easy ending. When we started, there were sometimes we were convinced this man had it in for us. But then, as the deadline drew closer, it was as if a switch had been flipped, and everything was just so easy. If he had been like that at the beginning, we would have completed the project during the pandemic.

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As it stands, when I have to do another project, I would not mind him being the supervisor. Because now I know how he operates and I would be able to replicate the energy.

If there is a proverb for what my partner and I went through during this period, it would be something along the lines of “tolerance can be a virtue.” Because what this man used our eyes to see during that time, it was only by a miracle we stayed on. We could have given up multiple times, but we would look back at how far we had come and then just forge ahead. And in the end, it ended on the best note.

So, my dear friends, this is one of my life stories that I feel fits in with a proverb. If you have a similar proverb that can work well, please let me know in the comments section. I am not all that good with proverbs, so mine may have been off.

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Diva Plavalaguna

Thank you for reading, till we meet in the next post.
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For those who do not know, Defense in this context means to talk about a project you embarked on. You will do this before a panel who then will grade you based on your presentation and your project. It is done in all Higher Institutions in Nigeria.


This post was inspired by the third topic for this week which is Proverb. Feel free to take part in it.


Borderimage credit: @deimage.



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6 comments
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tolerance can be a virtue.

I also had that attitude toward my adviser in my Thesis (Project) as he stressed me out; when I needed him in his role as adviser, he wasn't there. Like I need to travel far to his home just for a signature. But also tolerance it is. Maybe they are training us also to face the real world; for school, life outside is more challenging than in school.

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(Edited)

These guys will just frustrate students...😒
Very annoying. It takes patience to deal with them.
Thank you for reading.

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Tolerance indeed can be a virtue.

He proved that difficult because he felt he knew what he was saying and the engineer too and known of them was willing to let go for the other. A times it's good and another time it's not because that singular act would have given you guys a spill if not that you handled it wisely..

The man was difficult and at the same time good. Am happy you guys followed slowly and you won at the end.

Thanks for sharing

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(Edited)

Yeah...
It ended well indeed. But it would have ended a lot faster if he had just made it a bit easier for us from the get...
Thank you for reading.

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This one is surprising, maybe the man is having mood swing😅. But thank God for the happy ending!

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(Edited)

Omo...
It would be one giant mood swing o
Seeing how it spanned over a year😂
But the happy ending is all that matters.
Thank you for reading.

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