Whether cutting almost an entire semester’s worth of classes in a college course constitutes a minor transgression or something more serious is certainly subject to debate. In the grand scheme of things, I think it falls in the no-big-deal category. Regardless of anyone’s view on the question, what I am absolutely sure of is that the error of judgment I made more than three decades ago shouldn’t be haunting me so relentlessly.
One of the things I liked about the Soviet system of higher education during my student days in the Soviet Union was the way in which university exams were conducted. Before every finals week, professors would give out lists of questions that students used to prepare for the exams. The lists tended to have approximately one hundred questions on each. They were the exact questions that would appear on the exams. From a list, a professor would randomly select five questions and place them on an index card called a ticket. A professor would make several of those tickets and spread them face down on a table on the day of an exam.
Because tickets had different sets of questions on them, the students in an exam room at any given time all had unique sets of questions to answer. Upon arrival for an exam, a student would be asked by the professor to pick one of the tickets. It was like playing the lottery. If the selected ticket had questions that a student hadn’t adequately prepared for, the examinee wasn’t allowed to put it down and pick another. For that reason, students in a course had to make sure they were prepared to answer every single question on the list that was provided to them. It ensured that all students had comprehensive knowledge of course material.
Soviet university exams had two parts, written and oral. Typically, a student would spend about an hour writing short answers to each of the five questions on their ticket. They would then be invited by the professor, who sat in a corner of the exam room, for the oral part of the exam. The professor would first review a student’s written answers and then follow up with questions. Sometimes a student who failed to answer the questions satisfactorily in the written part could still pass the exam if they were able to demonstrate in the oral discussion that they had a good grasp of the subject.
Grading was on a two-to-five scale. Five meant a student had demonstrated excellence; four represented very good knowledge; three indicated satisfactory performance; two was a failing grade. Students who failed any exam had to return the day after to retake it or find mutually convenient times with their professors to reschedule.
I was generally a good student and my grades were almost always either fives or fours. However, I ran into trouble one semester in my junior year. I miserably failed an exam because I went into it completely unprepared.
It was a political economy class. I had been in the Soviet Union for a little over four years and had by then determined that socialism wasn’t for me. I found the first couple of classes so boring that I decided I wouldn’t attend the rest. That was an extremely unwise decision because it was a required course.
Victor and Jerry, the two other Ghanaians in my class, were my closest friends in the Soviet Union. We lived in the same dormitory, took the same classes, and traveled everywhere together. I don’t recall saying anything to influence their views about the course but they became my partners in crime. All three of us stopped attending that political economy class.
There were only two other Africans in our class. For some reason, it didn’t occur to us that 60 percent of the small Black population missing from the sea of White Soviet students who gathered in the auditorium each week would be extremely glaring. Of course the professor noticed it right away.
A bit of panic started to set in for us as finals week approached. Through other friends in the class, we had obtained the list of exam questions and started our “preparation” for the test. We quickly realized what a terrible decision we had made by cutting all those classes.
The three of us wheeled our suitcases into the exam room the day of the final. That was another exercise of poor judgment on our part. We were all packed, with confirmed tickets in hand, ready to head to the train station immediately after the exam to travel to England.
It was clear by the way the professor looked at us as we entered the room that there was trouble brewing. We had pulled a few all-nighters and had gained some confidence that perhaps we were going to be alright after all. Nothing could have been further from the truth. It was only after picking up our tickets that we realized how much trouble we were really in. We were nowhere near prepared, and none of us had any clue what to write for most of the questions on our tickets. All three of us duly received failing grades.
We waited till all students had left the room and then went back inside to plead with the professor. We were hoping to be able to demonstrate “knowledge” of the subject in some other way to receive passing grades and allow us to travel that day. He didn’t budge, even after we showed him our confirmed tickets. The best he could do was to have us come back the next day to retake the exam.
Utterly dejected, we went back to the dorm. One more night of studying wasn’t going to change the picture much but we hoped for the best. We returned to the classroom quite early the next day, again with our suitcases in hand. As expected, our level of competency hadn’t changed materially. After much fidgeting for about an hour, we went in turns to the professor’s desk.
To our collective relief, he gave each of us a three. I suspected the only reason we “passed” was that he had decided we weren’t worth any more of his time. But a pass was a pass. We were delighted to be freed to get on with our journey to England.
I started having the nightmares a couple of years later. They have come in two forms. In the first kind, I find myself completely unprepared for an impending final exam and I am panicking. The second variety occurs more often. In it, I am always in the final semester of some degree program that I am enrolled in and I have either cut many of the classes in a core course or have failed to submit assignments and thus have no hope of graduating. It is always a huge relief when I wake up and I realize that the whole thing was just a dream.
My family has heard hundreds of stories about my experiences in the Soviet Union. I deliberately withheld this one until both of my children graduated from college. I feared that if I told the story while they were still in school, I would have no right to chastise them if they engaged in the same transgression. My grandchildren will not be permitted to use this small blemish on my record against me because slates get wiped clean after a while (expiration of statute of limitations in this case).
Given how long I have had these nightmares, I am starting to wonder if they will ever stop. I’m not sure if there is some form of therapy that could help. Also, I don’t know if that professor is still alive. If he is, and he had the opportunity to read this confession, he would almost certainly be delighted by the heavy price I have paid all these years for that minor transgression. Perhaps he would also say I am downplaying the crime.