The Paradox of Expectations

Walk through the corridors of E1, Alexander Brown Hall at 2:00 AM on any given Tuesday, and you’ll find a familiar scene. The reading room is packed; coffee mugs on their last dregs, several textbooks spread out, the quiet hum of anxiety hanging thick in the air.

Here in Ọgbà, preparing for exams is less of an academic hurdle and more of an extreme endurance sport. A game of juggling bulky textbooks, passionately trying to make sense of pathology, pharmacology, and endless clinical rotations, while also counting down the days to an exam that you worry could decide your entire existence.

But if you pull back from the towering stacks of notes and look at the students themselves, you’ll notice that everyone in that room is fueled by a different kind of engine. We all feel the heat of the upcoming MB exams, but where that heat comes from tells a very interesting story about the psychology of a medical student.

The first group contains the students with the loudest kind of pressure. We all know them, and many of us are them. These are the students whose parents call them on Sunday evenings not just to say hello, but to ask how many chapters of Robbins they covered over the weekend. They come from families where excellence is not a goal; it’s a strict baseline. There are set standards, older siblings who have already set impossible records, and a tangible fear of what happens if they bring home a failure. For this group, the pressure is a physical entity. It’s the proverbial cane hanging over their heads. They read because they are terrified of the phone call they will have to make if they see a resit on the notice board. The struggle is brutal, but the rules are clear: pass, or face the music.

Then, there is the second group. These are the students who supposedly have it easy. If you ask them what their parents expect, they’ll shrug and say, "They just want me to do my best." There are no threats of disownment, no aggressive demands for distinctions, no Sunday evening interrogations. They have been handed a blank check of absolute trust by their parents. 

“We believe in you. We know you’ll make us proud. Whatever you get, we know you tried.”

That sounds like the ultimate medical school dream any student could wish for. A peaceful, stress-free existence. But ask any student in this category, and they will tell you the darkest secret of their lives: Zero pressure is the highest form of pressure.

When you have strict, demanding parents, your goal is simple: do your best to satisfy them and escape their wrath because you are fighting an external force. But when your parents give you nothing but pure, unfiltered belief, the battle moves inward. You are no longer fighting to beat a set standard; you are fighting in order not to betray a sacred trust. Failing someone who expects you to fail or threatens you into passing is one thing but disappointing someone who believes you are completely infallible? That is a uniquely agonizing kind of heartbreak. When there is no external whip driving you to the library, you have to become your own tyrant.

For the student with "zero pressure," every time they try to sleep early instead of doing that extra hour of TDB, a quiet voice whispers: They think you are working hard. They trust you. It’s a psychological chokehold. The absence of parental demands creates a massive vacuum, and the student inevitably fills it with self-imposed expectations that are often twice as harsh as anything an African parent could ever invent. You are not just trying to pass pharmacology; you are desperately trying to ensure that the people who think the world of you never have to realize you are just human, and that you struggle too.

As the exams draw closer and the tension of Ọgbà reaches its peak, it’s worth taking a step back to evaluate the invisible weights we are all carrying. Whether you are reading to escape the wrath of a demanding family legacy, or you are reading because the agonizing weight of your parents' unconditional trust won't let you sleep, the struggle is valid. The exams will come, and the exams will pass. Until then, respect the student staring blankly at a slide in the lab who looks like they have no worries in the world. Sometimes, having nobody breathing down your neck is exactly what makes it so hard to breathe.

SHITTU, Opeyemi Habeeb