SOUND AND FURY: AN INTERNSHIP CHRONICLE

Entry 1

U. Mark dead? I had prayed to the heavens that it should not be true, would not be true. But as yesterday have way to today, it seemed truer than it had been when the news first broke: Engr. Dr. U. Mark, head of department Materials and Metallurgical Engineering, FUTO has departed this realm of tears. He was not my H.O.D to be sure; I am an electrolite after all. But begin an electrolite meant that I am an engineering undergrad, and being an engineering undergrad meant I, like thousands of students before and thousands of students after, learned Engineering Materials I & II (ENG207 and ENG208) under the leaky ancient roof of the ironic Hall of Mercy (as I write it’s still leaky only whitewashed on the outside). And that, in the 2017/2018 academic year, meant Dr. U. Mark. I still don’t know what the U stood for, at one point I did(Uche?, Ugochukwu?), but now I don’t. I have attended hundreds of lectures (it ought to have been hundreds of hundreds, but I have a reputation to protect) but few outside my own department (and even within) have managed to earn my admiration. Dr. Mark was one of them. Considerate, disciplined without being exacting, actually intelligent, he was to a great extent, all that could be desired in a lecturer, at least from a distance—6 to 8 seats away. He will be sorely missed by those of us that know a thing or two about engineering, sophomores, and future engineering undergrads with the gall to make FUTO their first choice. (They might never know it, but never mind about that)

I didn’t intend to being my internship chronicle this way. In truth, I had not really intended to begin. Reading the early entries of some other interns and having not gotten an in-person internship while some others were getting their first paychecks had made me lose whatever enthusiasm that may have existed to join the tradition of writing SIWES diaries. Even after getting a placement, my imperial nature resisted undertaking a task that would interfere with my naps. (Writing is hard work, and trying to turn something as boring as going to work into something worth reading is doubly so) This changed somewhat when some of the entries I had been reading began to sound like Septon Jorquen’s "Lord Commander Orbert rose at dawn and moved his bowels"— to me at least. It looked as though I couldn’t do any worse. So, to try and avoid that effect in this chronicle, I won’t be writing every day, and I won’t be limiting my entries to events related to my internship or that occured during the time. Neither will I follow any particular chronology nor limit myself to one entry per day. But certainly, this work would end whenever we are summoned back to the University to defend our industrial training before men and women, tenured and titled(it’s an internship chronicle after all). So till the gods deem it fit to inspire me to pick up the pen again, it is au revoir

I didn’t intend to being my internship chronicle this way. In truth, I had not really intended to begin. Reading the early entries of some other interns and having not gotten an in-person internship while some others were getting their first paychecks had made me lose whatever enthusiasm that may have existed to join the tradition of writing SIWES diaries. Even after getting a placement, my imperial nature resisted undertaking a task that would interfere with my naps. (Writing is hard work, and trying to turn something as boring as going to work into something worth reading is doubly so) This changed somewhat when some of the entries I had been reading began to sound like Septon Jorquen’s "Lord Commander Orbert rose at dawn and moved his bowels"— to me at least. It looked as though I couldn’t do any worse. So, to try and avoid that effect in this chronicle, I won’t be writing every day, and I won’t be limiting my entries to events related to my internship or that occured during the time. Neither will I follow any particular chronology nor limit myself to one entry per day. But certainly, this work would end whenever we are summoned back to the University to defend our industrial training before men and women, tenured and titled(it’s an internship chronicle after all). So till the gods deem it fit to inspire me to pick up the pen again, it is au revoir.