I remember during my uni days, which honestly still feels like yesterday. It’s only been a few months since I finished, and I’m still in that awkward post-graduation phase of waiting for clearance and my statement of results. But this prompt really took me back.
So there was this semantics class. And when I say boring, I mean the kind of boring that makes you question every academic decision that led you there. The lecturer was going on and on, dictating notes, you know the way lecturers do when they’re convinced every word that comes out of their mouth is academic gold. At some point, she paused and insisted we write down a particular sentence and underline it. This lady repeated it like it was the most important thing we’d hear that day.
My seatmate dutifully wrote it down and underlined it. “Uggh, what an obedient scholar”, I scoffed. As for me, my head was comfortably parked on the desk. I wasn’t even pretending to be interested. I was absent-mindedly kicking the air under the table, waiting for the class to end so life could resume.
Fast forward to our CA. Tell me why that same phrase appeared in the test and tell me why I was staring at the question like it was written in ancient Greek. Oh, we all know why at this point.
At that moment, staring at my script point blank, was when I remembered the lecturer insisting we underline it. Suddenly the memory came back so vividly and in retrospect I saw my seatmate’s pen moving, the underline, and my own stubborn refusal to participate.
The irony of this entire thing is that I still ended up with a B in the course at the end of the semester. Not terrible, respectable even.
But that one question I missed due to my disobedience stuck. It’s actually funny how the smallest moments in class, I mean the ones you ignore because you’re tired or bored, are sometimes the exact ones that come back to haunt you academically.
All I had to do was underline it. Lmao
My response to the freewriters daily prompt