I have failed too many times in life that I wouldn't need to think about it to tell when you ask me to tell about one even in my sleep.
One of those times was about 5 years ago.
I was in my first year in the Dispensing Opticianry department in Federal Polytechnic Nekede Owerri - a course I had gone for because I was tired of being at home after five years of finishing from secondary school.
A few weeks into the second semester, lectures started becoming boring and I would begin to miss classes. I would sit in an empty class or anywhere else where silence reigned and it wasn't long before I birthed the idea to build a Literary Society never minding that I still wrote stories with displaced tenses and punctuations.
Never also minding that I hadn't enough confidence and courage to take up the responsibilities that would come with setting up a society of that kind.
I only desperately needed a way out of the confines of the four walls of my lecture halls sometimes.
And then, the Bleeding Pen Literary Society was birthed.
I began this society with Ohakwe Grace
. The first few weeks saw us making plans, creating awareness in the school, holding meetings with the members that joined almost every week, writing and sending letters to offices, printing and sharing our fliers. And later, going to these offices to meet these lecturers whose names and validations we thought we needed to grow bigger.
This was where my failure began. Yes, it was my failure.
While we went about these plans and seeking validations, a few other people like
Onyejeme Chimere Philemon joined and I remember being warned.
I remember being told we could continue moving in the small pace that we moved in and involved no lecturers/professors unless for teaching purposes only.
But I and a few others needed Bleeding Pen Literary Society to be a registered society in the school. We wanted it to be there even after we had left even though the society was not going to be in our names.
No, it wasn't what we wanted. It was the condition a few of these lecturers gave us and we accepted it was what we wanted as that was the only way our letters could get to the Rector and the Dean of Students Affairs.
When our letter reached the Dean's office and it was time to get one that had at least one signature from one of these lecturers to get to the Rector, the delay came in.
The delay lasted till my last few weeks in the school.
P.S: I applied for a two-year program- National Diploma.
During our last week in school, Grace and I visited the professor's office to know what our fate was but unfortunately, we were told he was out of school even when we were almost sure he was in there.
There we put an end to it and agreed that I had failed.
It was a kind of failure that came with shame.
A kind that came from desperation and greed.
Keep learning. It is part of life. I hope you have learnt from it.