Three Friends I Didn’t Expect to Meet in Campus

It’s around 1715hrs, I decide to take a walk along the highway. I’ve been indoors for long hours, and to break the boredom, I grab my earphones, put on my hoodie, and without forgetting, I take my wristwatch and walk out. The sun that was unbearable during the day is now shying away – paving the way for the night.

It’s slowly sinking in the west, leaving behind some beautiful red-like rays. “That looks exciting,” I say to myself as I take the first corner. I greet a few idling guys as I proceed. The evening breeze is fantastic, and I feel like I’m missing something. “Oh, it’s the fresh upcountry air,” I smile then brush off the idea. I remember carrying my earphones, pull them out, plug in the pin, select one truck, then hit play. Just before I get to the main road, I see some school children being dropped off and something crosses my mind.

I start reflecting on-campus life. It’s been over 10 months since we called it a wrap, and everyone went their way. Events of the final year are still fresh in my mind. The workload was insane, and two semesters which is a total of eight months to us, seemed like a high school term. We were busy people, lecturers could throw in assignments left, right, and center. Not to mention handouts and make-up classes. What was even more disgusting was a final year project.

So, you need to research your project proposal, read for your cats, attended all the lectures and all that. I met these three guys during the project hustle that we were supposed to team up. Let me introduce them, my first friend I call him professor. The second one goes by the name wise man, and a third guy is a short man.

All these names are for fun, but again, have some attachment to each one of them. The Professor acts and behaves like one. This guy was the most serious in the group. He could think very hard about just anything. His concern was too much. Not to mention how he could spend hours in the library reading for a cat. But he worried too much about minor stuff.

I found Wiseman to be contrary to his title. Although he was wise in his own ways – this guy joked a lot. The wise man was not only a comedian in our group but also a class cracker. We were never bored when he’s around. Wiseman could crack a joke in the middle of a serious discussion and act like he had no idea of what was happening. Short man, on the other hand, was the shortest of us all. But there was something about him – he was a deals man.

Do you want to know how to make some quick cash? Talk to the short guy. He had his magic ways of making things happen. Talk of connections, and he carried the day. I remember him gathering several cleaver proposal ideas that saved us big time.

I know you’re wondering what my title was in this exciting group. I was the OG. Hahaha, just kidding, though. Regardless of all the fancy names we crowned ourselves, we were generally jokers. We could only meet for project proposal discussion during the last few days towards presentation. We even didn’t have a lecturer to guide us through anything.

Well, we just picked one but never met him. I guess we took advantage of the lecturer being so busy. No, that’s just an excuse. Our classmates could meet with their project supervisors every week.

For us, that was not necessary. Funny enough, we could meet, then spend more than a half the time discussing things parallel to our project. Our problem did not even start there. We could plan very carefully, have a lengthy WhatsApp group discussion and decide to meet at exactly 0900hrs on Saturday. We went ahead to remind ourselves the night before our meeting. But when the day finally comes, things happened differently. The professor could arrive at our agreed meeting place at least 30 minutes past time. I would come an hour later.

A big problem lay in the other two guys. Wiseman would sometimes never show up ultimately. The deal guy would come but very late, expecting the two of us (professor and I) to have done something - only to find nothing. The only thing we did was sit down and talk stupid stuff about life.

We would call it a day then agree to meet the following day in the afternoon. Do you remember I said I was the OG? Well, I walked around with the whole project on my laptop. I could do the typing, proofreading, and editing. Create PDFs and send them out to the other members. Lol!

We went on with the joking trend until it was our day to present what we had. That’s when things went south. First, whatever we bragged about having was void and null. We were slapped on the foreheads with questions that we could not answer. It was so hard for us to defend our proposal and convince the lecturers that it was worth it. Our objectives were conflicting with our methodology. We had put together some variables that did not make sense.

Everything was out of place. What was even pathetic was the title of our proposal. Damn! Although we knew what was expected of us, we went ahead and picked a theory kind of thing; instead of a Statistics or Actuarial based stuff. We were just lazy and did not want to get involved with anything that could consume our energy and time.

Our proposal was turned down, and we were to go back on the drawing board. That’s when it hit us hard. Anyway, we became a little bit serious and decided to use Survival Analysis to do some estimations. We still didn’t frequently meet until we were left with one month to defend our project.

All the time that we had wasted had to be compensated during that one month. It was hectic, but the beauty part was that the three guys together with I became real and represented the names I gave above. For the first time, the wise man came with his laptop.

Professor ensured that he collected data we had applied for from the registrar academic affairs’ office. The short guy was even better on making useful deals that, as usual, saved us significant time while processing the data. But we still never consulted a lecturer. What we did was get a lecturer a day before the presentation day and put him as our supervisor.

The advantage we had was that this lecturer took us through the Survival Analysis Unit, and he was happy that we were doing something related to his unit. We were taking chances – that was trading on dangerous lines. Something I’d not advise anybody to try.

Well, we presented our stuff, and regardless of a few hiccups during the presentation, we were wise enough to defend our work. It went through. In fact, we did much better than most of the guys who met with their supervisors frequently.

Although we still have our WhatsApp group that we created during that time, I still feel that I miss these guys.