Just last week, I was fortunate to make a new dress for a young girl who just graduated from secondary school. You can see the excitement in not just her but also her mum as she anticipates beginning her journey as a university undergraduate. I was very happy for her as well, as being in that moment took me back over a decade ago when I was in the same shoes, full of excitement, hope, and dreams. Still, something was lacking, reality, it's easy to fantacise about the future and think there is a one straight way to attain your dreams, like I heard this young girl's mum say to her, "in four to five years, you will finish university, get a big paying job and also get married you should at most 25 years old when you finish and already married."
You see, there is nothing bad in praying and hoping all this positivity into your children's lives, but as a Nigerian and also a fellow graduate who have gone through the struggles, face the four walls of the university, I believe it's not enough for her mum to place all this goals on her young daughter without equipping her enough for the life ahead.
Gone are those days when having a certificate automatically place you among the rich, mighty and respected ones, today, the job market is saturated with unemployed graduates, not because they are not capable but because they all placed their eggs in one basket- get a white collar job after school, sometimes I wonder who set this standard that all graduates must be employees and not employers of labour, so the very first advice I would give to anyone embarking on starting school, is to put this mindset aside and think out of the box, yes, being a graduate is good, what other skill do you possess, what are you good at? If your certificate wasn't in the picture, can you still survive?
It took most of facing the music of low pay, unemployment, and hard life to realize what we missed out on early on. Some looked down on these skills because they were considered a job for illiterates, not knowing you that is educated can do so much more with these skills. Like I always say, the richest men in the world today are not employees, rather are business owners, skilled men, so if your aim in life is not to be kept in a box, then think out of it.
Also, no one is an island, as you grow in life, learn to build meaningful connection, be kind to people and don't look down on any one, people are like ladder, just like the way people traded by batter in the past, having healthy connections with people that can trade something vital for your upliftment tomorrow. This means you also need to have something vital to offer.
This is not a post to tell you school is a scam; it isn't, but you can do yourself a lot more good by not depending on school alone.
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Thank you for reading. ❤❤