The reason why everyone goes to school most times, especially these present days, isn't for the sake of getting educated or even knowing people. It's all about getting a certificate, a degree.
And the bitter truth about a degree is that it actually doesn't show or prove how qualified someone is or the amount of work put in to earn the degree. It just tells people that yes, the person with a degree is qualified.
For example, I know someone who is now going after his highest degree when he doesn't even need to because the money he gets from whatever he is doing is three times that of the highest he can get with the highest possible degree in his field.
Now, when I talk about this guy, some people would say maybe it isn't about using the degree to get a job for him, maybe he just has the passion for it.
Nah…the one he already got wasn't even earned because he knows nothing about the field of study he majored in.
All he had to do was pay, and he got a clean outstanding degree.
These days, degrees are becoming more of a social perception. And it's starting to make it look like a worthless shiny trophy.
And the state of the country isn't making matters any better. The job scarcity and corruption just make it worse.
I have seen the lives of a family with power, and their son just needs to get a degree by any means (money), and he has a six-figure job waiting for him.
But here is the thing, all these things don't make the efforts one puts in to get their degree worthless. You just have to be more determined and stand out above the ones that make degrees look like they're worthless.
And you don't just end in determination and hard work. You need to go further and pray because my country is very funny. It can frustrate you till you start to question whether your village people have tied you down somewhere in a shrine.
Today, while walking with some of my course mates after the exam, and we were all talking about how we put in our all, some people told us that there is a school cab driver who is a graduate of the school.
Till now I don't know if they just made it up. But trust me, in Nigeria? It is a very realistic story.
Just imagine coming back to your school to work as a driver. I really wonder about the back story that led to that, if it's true.
Before you decide you want to put the effort and money into getting a degree, you have to be sure you know what you are doing. Know where you stand.
Because I laugh in my head sometimes when I see people who are from not-so-rich backgrounds or who have decided their only way forward is getting a degree by fooling around with people who have few or many alternatives for a way forward.
You can't be a student whose parents struggle to pay school fees and have the same low academic performance as a fraudster and still act nonchalantly with them.
And if you still choose to go for a degree, you still have to be ready with a backup plan.
I have learned a lot in school, even though I haven't really used any major thing I have learned. Not even in the last six months. But they are very useful because they aren't common things I can use every time.
But still, I feel that to fix the decline in the worth of degrees, the school system needs to put in some effort too and change. They should stop corruption at every level in the system.
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