This article is dedicated to all the confident singles out there following their dreams and resisting the peer pressure to be in a relationship: even the best relationship needs hard work to maintain.
The Faculty of love in those days used to be comprised of the Faculties of Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Laboratory Sciences, and Nursing. There was a lot of mystery surrounding that Faculty at least to non-medical students. It was the most guarded faculty hence difficult to get in and out- during those days- unless you were a member. The towering building that housed the faculties looked like a fortress, adding to its mystery. The faculty of love was an interesting place to be.
To begin with, the ratio of male to female students was one to three. This made males have plenty of females and a variety to choose from! At least outsiders thought so. And this automatically made the male species in this Faculty to be the most blessed in the campus. But the truth couldn’t be further from that. They were the most stressed male species in town. Books had crushed some males’ testicles and couldn’t afford to think about anything else.
You had to be smart-physically- before you went to the love lab as you would be sharing the lecture hall with the opposite sex. You could afford to go to other lecture halls without ironing your clothes but not to the love lab. The females had to be even smarter and carry a consortium of make-ups. The lipstick had to be re-applied and a mirror would be handy. In case it was forgotten the Faculty was blessed with a lot of windows which would still do. You would be asked to open windows only to look outside and find a beauty queen using it. You would be forced to go and start with the furthest one to give her time to the bewilderment of the rest as to the funny order of your doing the task. But a girl got to do what a girl got to do.
We used to stay in the campus the longest before the Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences added a year to its programs to cap the half-decade period. A female would enter as a chick and leave as a hen. A male wouldn’t have changed much except he would leave wearing a thick layer of beard and maybe a moustache. In between they would live to experience triumphs and disappointments. We too had our own Professors of love affairs (POLAs) just in case some interactions were not making sense to one because even when a move was weird, it was significant to the plotter. One of the advice was not to make a move as early as the first few weeks, she was charged, she had been advised by her mum to go and study so the information was still hot in her hippocampus-the seat of memory.
Being single was never a huge deal or problem. The climate was pretty accepting of it. But managing the solitude that came with it usually could be. Especially if one was not busy. In our camp we would go the solo flight at least we promised ourselves. Personally I had more reasons for this flight mode; I had entered the love lab two weeks late due to admission bureaucracies and I hit the floor running as I had lots to catch up.` Partnership’ would slow me down. To be really in love, you have to be really free from all of life’s hustles, unclog the mind so that the natural covalent forces we call love between two beings can ignite and warm the heart. Furthermore finding love is much rarer, sometimes involving luck, serendipity, a full moon a foreign language-and I mean it-where it is not the meaning of the actual words but the intonation and the vibratos of the two hearts in proximity that matters.
Every generation thinks that they are the ones who have discovered love so did batch fourteen. The funny thing is that, of all the relationships that would flourish none ended in marriage. For the first few days, guys were cool. They were gauging the environment. They were also a bit afraid of the opposite sex. It was just a matter of a few coming days when they would be anchored down by the spells of Cupid, the looks of Medusa, and the agony of Romeo.