IF MR. BULLY TEACHES… – A SATIRE

By Professor X

NOTE: this satire isn’t written to dent anyone’s image, or make peculiarity to anyone, it has just taken into consideration a general view of students’ fears of lecturers across all tertiary institutions in Nigeria.

Every morning of each day of my undergraduate days that had past, I had always woken up to skipping one class or the other. Now the subsequent days that shall follow, I don’t see myself attending all classes as well. You would want to adjudge me as the lazy type, but before then, ask yourself if you would attend classes if Mr. Bully teaches.
Maybe I have a good retentive memory, or maybe I am of a magnetic brain that weds with every metal of words or teachings that slide past it, or maybe I have a good listening ear, or perhaps, I am being overly serious (which I don’t want to be consequence of the definition Nigeria has given on education,) but what I do know and sure of is I am the type that grasps every little thing that can be taught in class, and so you can say I’m brilliant, or preferably, I’m relentless in making academic excellence. But whatever definition or inference of brilliancy or intelligence you coined from the characteristics above, those may apparently explain my past, but definitely not my present – not when I now have Mr. Bully with a marker, taking me ABC, as simple as it may seem, yet I can’t comprehend, for his ways of teaching are ones filled with complexity.
If Mr. Bully teaches, you get enervated, your vitality to learn and understand vanishes like wind in the thin air, and you would wonder, why should I have attended the class? Then like a spree, the answer gushes in your head, “Mr. Bully always wants an attendance.” On several occasions this semester, I had been a good student who attended classes because of the attendance. Not shying away, in the same vein, I can equally say for some who don’t have the voice that they also attended classes this semester because they so much desire their names to be on the Mr. Bully’s attendance sheet, and not because of the deriving benefits they would get from the lectures being passed across.
Mr. Bully doesn’t come to class with cane, nor with whips to whip our butts, the fear Mr. Bully adorned himself with is enough to infect our brains, and turn his simple arithmetic lectures into bouts of complex calculus. Mr. Bully is that which when a student misses one of his classes, the fear of failure will start creeping in into his thoughts. Mr. Bully wears a crooked smile to class, flashing every student at he delivers lecture, “do you all understand?” he says, but we dare not say no, and “any question?” he furthers, but we dare not raise hands, for a little misbehavior is an imprint of a stigma on your body telling of you re-running the course. Mr. Bully is the ever smiling type, the one who is like a father to all, the one with the soft heart, yet he is the only god the department fears.
As a footnote, in the context of this satire, Mr. Bully can stop being one if he adorns himself with a genuine smile, comes to class putting off the scary mindset, and finally, at the beginning of his class each semester, he tells everyone they can have an “A”, and not the usual mindset the students will brood that their best effort could only struggle to get them a “C”. Mr. Bully may be the best when it comes to intelligence, but if Mr. Bully isn’t approachable to his students, then Mr. Bully’s intelligence cannot be passed across to his students.
In conclusion, if Mr. Bully teaches, all in the name of having an “A”, a student may undergo a psychological trauma (a case study is that of an OAU student who supposedly ran insane), and other students who couldn’t afford that level of overly seriousness, would be enervated and resorted to praying for a grade that would make them not rerun the course – a case is when a student jubilates over a “D”, so far he isn’t coming to take Mr. Bully’s course(s) again.