Present Continuous

What I want to be when I resume
by Chude Jideonwo

What I want to be when I grow up.  Those who call themselves adults will remember completing this sentence at sometime in their post-nappy-rash life.  Now, let’s get this clear (as usual), I NEVER said I wanted to be a lawyer … that madness started later in life and I put the blame squarely where it belongs … on the very broad shoulders of the immortal F. R. A. Williams (May his soul rest in the most perfect peace)!

But the exercise I want to engage in is no different from the other one…

I have been on holidays for the past two months, since I finished the last paper in the last examination, and I am ashamed to inform you that the closest I have come to anything even the slightest bit related to law is visiting the offices of this magazine.

The past couple of weeks have seen me doing everything else: work, play, books, travel, money-chasing and (I hope) money-making.  But in these pursuits, I have been very careful to keep the law at arm’s length.  It is not exactly the Devil, but sometimes the long spoon still comes in handy.

Today though, I had reason to visit the law library for the first time in two and a half years, and to make matters worse it wasn’t even for me.  It was on the behalf of my cousin, also a student of law in the South-East, who like me is going to be a final-year Law student come October.  Worse, it is my cousin’s visit that effectively reminds me that come resumption, I will be a Part V student of Law!

Feeling very fish-out-of-water in the library building, I made to sit down and, with little effort, ignored the wisened, snobbish, over-weights that lined the bookshelves.  But the seconds flowed into minutes, and boredom soon ordered me to pick up some law review book from the desk.  As soon as the peculiar scent of well preserved books wafted into my nose … I (funny as it sounds) felt the same way I suspect I might feel in six years, when I would have acquired this LLB degree, and its sister BL … nostalgia.

I will remember those days when I battled and conquered the law by the whiskers, and I will smile at myself for ever think Law was my fortress.  Only awkward thing is, I am yet to cross the final bridge and already nostalgia is opening its arms…

But, like those students who suddenly realise, forty-eight hours to an examination, that the only thing they know, apart from the title of the course, is the course outline and perhaps the lecturer’s first name.  I have made up my mind that this final semester will be different.  Let me share my war plan…

What do I want to be when I resume?  Yeah, yeah, I know you know – a FANTASTIC student.  So let’s get busy with this plan:  WHO do I want to be when I resume? I have three ‘role models.’

The three are classmates and classmates whose thriving romance with the Law I have at once envied and despised.  For me, the study of Law is that grouchy, jealous husband who never has an encounter with reason or fairness, demands that his will and way be done without a rational explanation, and is the world’s number one chauvinist.  And a snob, a snob with bad breath.

Michael is the first person I want to be when I resume.  Michael is the quintessential law student: driven, flamboyant, brilliant, and garrulous once in a not-infrequent while, amiable, opinionated too, and motivated… too motivated, I am tempted to think sometimes, but it works very well for him.

Michael is the one who asks the teacher the questions – the right, strategic questions; the one who answers the teacher’s questions, who argues legal issues in the midst of classmates at the right pitch of voice, enough for you to confirm his brilliance.  He is also the first pay for a hand out… the first, the first to do anything necessary for a student in a law class.

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Last Edited on June 18, 2006, 12:00 am.  This page has been viewed 468 times

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