Hello Undergraduate Degree, (because everyone says dear a bit too much)
Allow me to call you Bachelor, maybe ‘cause it’s much cooler to do so or maybe ‘cause I can relate.
I have been itching to write this email (I mean who write letters in this day and age) but I never really got round to it.
You must feel quite important I suppose; you get more than 10,000 people each intake to enroll imply in pursuit of you- that’s only for one institution by the way. Long treks are made and journeys from the west, east, and the north even the south just to access you. As if that’s not enough you require a minimum of four years commitment to have you in my pocket. Pfft! Such a hot cake you are!
Oh well but I imagine it’s worthwhile, you do hold the promise of a job or at the very least, standing in the society. Pause- I am still not over the grandiosity that must coarse through you. Do you know how many loans are taken out to pay the cost to acquire you, almost like dowry for an expensive bride? I can’t begin to fathom what those in the parallel program cough out just to get a hold of you. While you’re at it, you choose and sieve the ones you want and the ones you don’t. Some finally grasp you while to others you are elusive always giving them retakes and missing marks, what a woman! (Feminists, take little offence)
On the other hand, Bachelor, it seems you have lost your value- you have been taken down a notch to a stamped piece of paper. I mean – you used to hold the promise of a job (as earlier stated) but now the edge is not in acquiring you but supplementing you with mpango wa Kandos like ACCA, CPA sometimes even a Masters. Look at it this way, now many of us who ran towards you realize that a good number -is it 7 out of the ten – richest people in the world don’t have you. Stunning, yes? Not quite. Entrepreneurship is now seen as a different entity from you, we see you as someone who stifles creativity, kills our vibe so to speak.
Who ever really reads for you much less actively seek out knowledge to acquire you? A select few. And the number, unfortunately, keeps decreasing by the year; as the number of mwakenyas increase. Do you see? Few people work to get you. I won’t be surprised if there is an unfit student doing a Bachelor in Physical Education or the Food Nutrition and Dietetics undergrad who’s always on a chipo mwitu diet or the Accounting student who can’t explain where a month’s allowance is gone in a week. See where I’m going with this? It seems funny but also saddening that you have simply become a means to an end.
So welcome to the world, the world where you are only for the academia, a world where you only satisfies the Ministry of Education’s 8-4-4 plan, a world where anyone will do anything to get you including writing small pieces of paper, saving relevant documents on the phone, exchanging answers- nothing that requires the hard work that you deserve, a world where a Civil Engineering graduate will pay thousands to have someone fix his blocked sink because he didn’t bother to listen to the lecturer. Welcome to this world.
Oh Bachelor, I don’t write this that you may despair, have hope, maybe a few more will see the light and desire more than the paper you are carried on, see you for who you are, maybe even work real hard to get you. It might get better or not (Nairobi Aviation- case in point) all the same- hope that someone stumbled upon this email and understands you are weightier than a piece of processed wood.
Yours faithfully, (only for a few more years)
Undergraduate,
I endeavor to learn all that I can, argue out all possible angles and understand what my mind can that I may become useful; functional. That I will not battle with common sense or what is simple logic, never becoming the learned fool but with a mind opened up to new possibilities by gathered knowledge. This I vow.
Signed: PseudoDr.
