Wande talks about trying exam malpractice for the first and last time and how a vindictive lecturer cost her four-years of her life.

After her project supervisor’s wahala, final year week and the shege that is clearance week, Wande was exhausted and couldn’t wait to graduate. She already had one foot out the door with just two papers left to write.

If you asked her, she was no longer a student. Which is why having last paper syndrome right before her near-final paper was very inconvenient. She had tried everything humanly possible to prepare for the exam but nothing was sticking. It was looking dangerously like she was going to carry over the course and so for the first time in her adult life, Wande decided to cheat.

As a beginner with zero experience, she did not know the first thing about exam malpractice.

“I had seen people do it and I felt if people had been doing it and getting away with it, why couldn’t I?”

The first thing she did was to sit far away from her friends. 

“They had no idea that I was planning something like that. Funny how that was the first time I would sit so far from them in the exam hall.”

Shortly after the exam started, she slipped out the piece of paper she had hidden and started to copy into her answer booklet. She didn’t get very far in her writing before the invigilator saw her. 

Bringing foreign materials into the hall is a lot different from whispering or giraffing. The invigilator did not tell her to change seats or stand up.

“The moment he saw me, he just quietly brought me a malpractice form to fill and asked me to continue writing.”

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She started to cry, staining the answer booklet with tears. Aside from her immediate circle of friends, Wande is basically a ghost to other members of her department. The other students gave her curious looks and went back to writing.

What followed in the coming weeks was silence from the school. To make matters worse, her phone was stolen. 

“When I was called to my department office to collect the letter inviting me to face the disciplinary committee, my friend had to come to my hostel to let me know.”

Wande had known it was coming, but the summons still met her with shock. She was determined to do everything possible before the panel meeting for a shot at graduating, but she had already been set up to fail.

 “I later found out his remarks on the form was more incriminating than the form itself, when I started going around to ask for leniency, some of the lecturers who tried to help me asked me if I had offended the lecturer that reported me because he wrote terrible things about me on the malpractice form. He made it practically impossible for me to graduate.”

The verdict of the panel was as she expected, ‘guilty.’

“My classmates had already convoked before I was called to get my letter of expulsion. It felt like the letter was just a formality because immediately after the meeting finished, my student ID card was collected.”

What Wande remembers most about the months following her expulsion is the terror of having to inform her parents that she would not be graduating and the pain of watching her friends at the convocation ceremony

“I stopped contacting my friends but a few of them still tried to reach out to me. I had to block myself from seeing their WhatsApp status because they were always posting about NYSC and it hurt too much to see.”

In those trying months, the only thing that held her together was her family’s support.

“At first, my mum would mention my expulsion in every disagreement we had but she was there for me regardless of her disappointment. My dad on the other hand did not show his disappointment or take out his frustration on me. He gladly paid for my next JAMB form.”

Wande took JAMB again and decided to start over somewhere else.

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“I didn’t once think of giving up. I really wanted to go to school. Again, I’m really grateful for my family because I have no idea what I’d have done if they decided not to support me.”

In talking about how this experience has changed her, Wande says she does not feel ashamed when she thinks about it. 

“I don’t treat it like a secret. People at my current school know, I told my roommate and friends about it from our very first year. I even did a video interview a while back that was shared on TikTok and to the whole department group. I believe people shouldn’t mock pain they haven’t endured.”

To her, the experience was a learning curve.

“I’ve become someone that can handle pressure after this experience. I’ve become a better student and it helps that I’ve developed PTSD for exam malpractice. I hardly look around at other students when writing exams now because I don’t want to see anything of the sort.”

Even though she wishes she had done things differently, knowing what she does now, Wande says she’d have not taken the easy way out.

“If I could go back in time with the knowledge of how to do it without getting caught, I still wouldn’t.”

Wande thinks cheating the system is not something anyone should be relying on to pass exams.

“I know it’s hard to explain to anybody that hasn’t gone through what I have but just don’t do it. Take it from me, it’s not worth it.”

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