Speak Up When You Have To

A few days ago, one of my friends, who had moved out of here and was in his one-year industrial training, had come around because of some documents he needed to get from the school.

_{photo by Oleg Laptev}

Well, he walked into my room today, and at first we were talking about random things until we began talking about school, and then we got to what he had traveled back to school to get. During that conversation, I remembered that he had mentioned to me, right before he traveled home, that he was trying to sort out some carryover issue that he had.

Apparently one of his course representatives had posted an exam result on their departmental WhatsApp group some time late last year, and in that result, this friend of mine had failed a particular course. He had talked to the course representative, and he had assured him that the result wasn't the final result and mistakes would be corrected.

It's been more than a month now since they had that conversation, and I asked my friend today if there was any progress on the situation. This was when he opened up to me and tried to explain to me that he had tried contacting the course rep a couple of times and nothing was happening.

Now this was where I felt I needed to come in; I felt I needed to tell him that in life, you don't dwell on 'maybes and the likes'; you try to take charge of things as often as you possibly can, especially when it comes to situations like this one, where failing any course could automatically make your one-year industrial training into a two-year one.

By the time I was done talking to him about everything, I made him understand the importance of speaking up when it matters the most, regardless of how the people on the other side react to what you say. Also, reminding him that no one would take things about himself (my friend) more seriously than my friend himself.

After I was done talking to him, he had quickly made some calls and tried to follow up on his result. As of this time, I have no idea what the current situation is, but I do hope and pray that it's one that favors him.