This semester things will change!
This semester my grades must shoot up!
This semester is for my GPA.
I’m taking as many courses as possible this semester!!!
This semester, this semester, this semester!!!

Many are the resolutions students make at the beginning of every semester. For some, motivation stems from continuous poor performance but a drastic improvement in the immediate past semester, for others it is, we must maintain our good standing at all cost. For a special few, that sudden conscious believe in their abilities to do much better.

But I must say, and this is true of this particular semester in focus, I actually came mentally and psychologically armoured not only to devastate the semester but to make it throw in the towel in its quest to frustrate me.

So, in the beginning the zeal never dwindled, fierce attitude showed no signs of potential demise. Positive energy covered my face like an anode. Getting to the end of the second quarter things started to get a little wobbly, it was at this point when I went back into myself to inquire whether or not I was still held tight to the original plan.

It appeared as though I was still in my element but it was just a matter of time for frustration from the regular to set in. At this point I have had it and was about to call it quit.

Out of nowhere bail located me just when the semester started to do the thing it does best, get tougher. At that very moment, it was such a great relief. This bail was unfortunate and a Pandemic. Typical of me and most of my species we feared and still loved the temporal arrest of everything. Simply elations caught us at very least for a while longer; students!!! The bail was a suspected Covid-19 case in the country.

How everything came to an abrupt standstill was a shock. President imposed on all social activities a month suspension. What this meant for me in the beginning only, “dopaminemeter” could tell, it was a great feeling. Never did I know this hike in excitement will be short-lived.

Home welcomed me. Not long after, lockdown met up with me. Social media had delivered it fair share of amusement but could not hold up for far too long. It was at this point that the feeling of things going back to even when I thought it was getting tougher dawned on me, but this was yet another wishful thinking at play.

A fancy terminology even though very popular became novel to our part of the Education fraternity. Mainstreaming E learning within the shortest possible time just to complete the semester, I screeched in outmost disagreement. How I will survive this experience only God could tell.

My geographical resources could not even catch up! Even if it tried. Laughter sadly lashed out of me. Knowing I won’t endure this brilliant but fancy system. I knew so well how it will turn out for me who is in the farthest of farthest, away from village’s city.

I knew so much that I will be absent in all classes if there even was.
I knew so much that my friends in the city would have the upper urge over me.
I knew so well that to survive I had to visit the nearest town to put some life into my digital accessories.

Again, this was the typical me, hunting around to gather excuses for why this E learning system won’t work for me. With time, reality fell on me. I got in tune with the idea, Zoom became that enemy of mine just by its mere fact of existence and providing a way out.

For most people E learning was that way out. For the few class who shared my features and discipline, it was as unbearable as much as it was extravagant. The already abstract Mathematical and engineering phenomena intensified in its abstract scale. Confusion had taken grip of my entire body at this point.

What made it even much worst was burial in loads of continuous unceasing assignments. Deadline didn’t matter to me anymore. Who would I go to for assistance? Asking my tutor a question I didn’t even understand, follow an instruction I have been presented with that I have no clue about?

My original ambitious goal to frustrate the semester had reversed in action, that I had practically subdued to the pressure. It was just a matter of time for me to realize that the shadow name for the fancy E learning term was "the passport into the land of assignment". What is of my journey at this very moment, I am significantly clueless.

The writer, Rexford Obeng is a student at University of Ghana, Legon