Afrobrit Episode 2 : Pride goeth before a downfall

For every Plab journey, the starting point is IELTS. I had written IELTS once in my 5th year in medical school for an elective placement and I did okay with very little preps. With this dense thought in my head, I told myself it would be a walk in the park. Towards the end of my housemanship, I had planned to take my IELTS exam once I was done. I had heard about my senior colleagues who has written the exam 2 , 3 or more times and I was like, how?? Aren’t they reading?? Is it that simple exam they can’t meet cut off for?? I couldn’t just imagine why they had to write it multiple times. I was clueless.

I booked my exam in september 2018 with the british council then, costing me 97,000 nigerian naira for the IELTS UKVI which was still needed at that time. I paid with some money I had saved. The payment process was stressful and inconvenient but I had no choice. My preparation was subtle. I did a little recap from my previous experience. I didn’t bother doing much practice with my writing section. I was quite certain my english fluency was okay so I was confident about the speaking section. I told myself I was going to meet that cutoff no matter how the exam went.

The exam day finally came. I did my written exam first and my speaking exam on a different day. I wasn’t really nervous. There were a lot of other candidates around me and I thought, ‘how many people are running away from this country?’ In the exam hall, there were cameras monitoring us and later found out there is usually extra security for UKVI exams. The exam went on and was finally over. I didn’t feel bad or good. I just left immediately. The speaking exam om the other hand was elating. A white woman was my examiner and she was nice and polite. All the questions I got were things I was familiar with and so I left with absolute certainty that I had passed my speaking test.

The most annoying thing about an exam is having to wait for the result to come out. Results come out after 15 days and it was a very long 15 days. I kept replaying the exam day in my head until the result finally came out. Results aren’t always released online, so sometimes you would have to go get the hard copy of your result withoit prior knowledge of what you scored which was exactly what happened to me. I took a cab to the center that very fateful day with so much anxiety. I was lucky the day was an actual result collection day as I was unaware of that fact. I went in and collected my result wrapped neatly in a brown envelope. I couldn’t bring myself to check it inside the building.

I ordered a cab back home. On my way, I decided to open the envelope. My heart was racing, probably having a headache from the thought of it all. I finally summoned the courage to look at it. I was holding this thick light green paper right in front of me. As i looked closely, my pupils dilated, i was pretty sure my heart stopped beating at an instant. Listening check, reading check, writing? writing? writing? I kept echoing it in my head as i saw the well rounded 6.0 staring at me. I put the paper back in the envelope thinking back at all I did wrong. Oh yes! You didn’t practice, I told myself. You were doing ‘I too know’ I told myself. In that moment, knowing I was definitely the author of my downfall, I said to myself ‘You are writing it again’.

I had to tell my mum what I was going through, I had to. I mean I wasn’t even sure I had the money to cough out again. I had no choice. I definitely told her and she understood perfectly. She said ‘you will definitely try again, don’t worry. God is in control’