The beginning of a new year most times feels like everything ended last year and has started afresh. It wasn't so for me academically, I had to resume school immediately in the second week of January this year. I couldn't go home for Christmas, had to attend a cross-over service here in my school, and it was my first time experiencing both away from home. The final year project kept me in school and took so much of my time.
One thing I was eager to do this year was to build my online presence, grow my brand and social media accounts to thousands of followers, become very consistent and get visible enough to start working with high paying clients. The activities of my final year project were way more than I expected, and I was attending classes while this was going on. Each day, it feels overwhelming and tiring to create content, post, and then engage other creators online. I couldn't keep up with it, I was building majorly on X, gave up about 4 times, and lost that momentum 4 times.
Another thing that didn't work out as much as I wanted was learning, upgrading, and adding more skills as a graphic designer. I actually did learn more. Oh yeah, I improved a lot and got some gigs, too, but it wasn't close to what I could have really achieved. I could barely stay up at night to make designs, learn, and implement new things, techniques, and tricks like I used to; I get back from school tired and drained up because I attended classes then went to the farm to continue my project work ( I worked on guinea fowl as an Animal Breeding and Genetics student). It was a lot for me. No one prepared us for what it would demand from me and my project mates.
On July 30th of 2025, I graduated from the university and was free from project work. All I was waiting for was final results and approval of the defence of my final year project. I stayed up in school waiting for my project supervisor to get back to us, but he didn't, and I ended up staying in the school area until he did. No more classes to attend, no more waking up very early to rush to school, no more assignments, and no more lectures threats to fail you. After some weeks, the network speed and coverage in my hostel got really bad and slow. I could barely do anything online and enjoy, watching videos, posting and surfing the Internet, and generally got boring because I had to wait minutes.
Image is mine
I paid for a course, building functional and interactive websites using Framer. I started well, making tiny progresses weekly until the bad network happened, I had to give up the learning at a point. More students than usual were admitted after my graduation, which made network coverage poor, allegedly. I still tried to learn at midnight and stayed up into the next day, but Internet speed got worse even at night, which made me stop learning since then. I am resuming fully when I leave this school area ending of the year.
I also paid for a copywriting course this year, but I didn't even finish it, I still have access to it and will finish it up before January next year. I had the money, so I paid up immediately. I saw the advertisement on my friends WhatsApp status. She is a really good and well respected Copywriter. I thought I was hungry enough for knowledge, but I've realised I wasn't hungry enough to finish the course. I was lazy, too.
I stopped writing here, too. Never saw that coming at all, I couldn't keep up because I was too busy the first half of the year working on my final year project. My phone got faulty for a long while and I could not repair it immediately. Powered down to pay up project fee,also. Now I am back to creating contents here.
These are the major things that didn't work out as much as I wanted this year, 2025. I haven't given up on them because they are vital to my growth and career, I have resumed some of them and am gradually making progress. Some of these were my own faults, my own mistakes, my poor commitments, and determination. I didn't focus on some alone. I was doing more than 3 things. Lesson learnt, and the good thing is that I already started some rather than waiting for next year. I've started trying out my new year resolution. It's best I make mistakes and correct them early.
Thank you for reading till the end of my blog. Feel free to give your comments.