If you haven’t had one in school, you wouldn’t know the beauty that lies therein. Anytime we mention reading, it gives my heart joy because if there something that can change the world; it is the power of readers. The question we are to ask ourselves is this, who is a reading partner?
A Reading partner is someone who has dedicated his time, energy and power to influence, motivates and helps an individual in achieving a sustainable reading culture. In my little journey on earth, I have come across so many different type of reading partner and in one way or the other they have been a blessing and a source of inspiration to me, as a matter of fact, they are an integral part of my success story and wherever I get to in life, I will always talk about them.
I want you to know that I wasn’t different from you; reading didn’t become a part of life all of a sudden. I was like you, always consuming large volume of books when exam draws near, if there was something that spur me to read, it was for exam purposes, my definition of reading was only for exam not to acquire knowledge but as we grow, I came to the understanding that I can actually do better, I thank God am better now. I am no more like that. I do love reading now.
I had my first reading partner experience when I was in secondary school, he was our senior prefect as at then, we have been friends but not as intimate as what drew us together. One thing about him was that he was very intelligent, we wonder how he does it, this guy was current, as young as we were then, he was very vast, he had an answer to a lot of question, whenever our teachers brings current affairs or topical issue to the class, he was always there to entertain and discuss with them. Most of the time, he save the class from the lashing tongue of the teachers who expected us to know what was been discussed in class. Any day he misses class, we all know something awful tends to happen that day, it is either one of us is flogged for not knowing what he ought to know or the wrong answer was provided. This infuriated our teachers and our class was tagged as the dullest class in the whole school. If there is anything that drew me to him, it was for examination purpose (You tend to have a lot of friends when you have something upstairs), but I ended up gaining much more than I bargain for, I would say he left an indelible mark on me.
Senior Secondary Certification exam was approaching and truth be told, our classes were getting tougher, tedious and more stressful, this wasn’t the first time my school would be undertaking such process, our own case seems to be different, the brilliant ones were few, the unserious ones were many and it will be a tragedy if only few pass, it will spoil the record of the school. I was part of the few who were brilliant but we all know how I did it. We were given series of quiz to test our knowledge. For those who have written this exam, you would agree with me that the exam comprises of what you have study from your SS1 to SS3. I was in a case of despair, all the exam I have written, I have actually crammed since I thought there was no need for them in future, the mindset I had was that all exam are the same, you only get to answer question on what you were taught that term, it only on rare occasion exams were set out of the box, it wasn’t frequent.
I never knew I was creating a fantasy world for myself; it hit me like lightning when I discovered it was the compilation of all we have done since SS1. The subjects were close to 11 or so and the textbook was not something my cramming brain could handle, of course I could cram a whole textbook, then you know that you are cramming with a focus on the expected question, but when we started studying the past question, I discovered that my cramming capacity couldn’t handle that much, they were very big and massive, and you know what that means. I had a limited time to study and I knew that if I didn’t do something as quick as possible, there is no other name we will tag my result, it will boldly written in the “F” language.
I needed to find a solution to my problem, I decided to seek counsel from the best in the class and that was how my journey of being a reader began, to cut the long story short, this friend, brother and class mate planted a seed in me which till today has bear many fruit and it is still reproducing. Time will not permit me to share my university experience and how the seed my secondary school friend planted got watered. I believe if there is another opportunity to do so, I would definitely be ready to share this, I leave you with this word; “There is power in reading but the zeal to read can only be fueled by a reading partner, you are never too old or young to get one”.
I Remain Timileyin Oni “God’s Intellectual”
I Love Reading
I Support Etcsines
Do have a Reading Week Ahead
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