When You Reach Your Wit’s End.

I watched my dreams, goals and aspirations crash before my eyes.

I always suffered from anxiety, especially as a young adult. Balancing my personal life, school, home and relationships was hard work. I had great inexplicable fear of the unknown. I worried about what would become of me if I failed to get excellent grades.

Furthermore, I worried at what would happen when I finished University. Will I graduate with good results? Will I get a good job? Will I be good enough? Will anyone ever marry me?

I have always wanted to be independent and self_reliant. I pushed myself to perfection and thus the anxiety. I was always trying to figure out things and playing my cards right. Things happening out of my plan would depress me.

As fate would have it, I did not pass my senior six very highly. That troubled me greatly. With those grades, it would be difficult finding a placement at a good University_if not impossible.

For as long as I could recall, I had always wanted to go to a particular University. It was indeed the center of excellence in the heart of Africa. When they offered me a diploma course, I took it. However, I despised the fact that I was doing a Diploma. It didn’t feel good enough, and I felt like I was suddenly behind all my classmates and agemates. It suddenly felt like an eternity until I would get done with my diploma and degree. All those wasted years and money.

At the University, my business course was 75% maths. I didn’t hate maths, but I preferred to have as little interaction with it as possible. Regardless, I gave it my best shot. I had GPA 3.33 after my first semester there. Not bad. However, during that Christmas holiday, I met with a few people and before I knew it, I was offered an opportunity to change courses. One lady suggested that I join a certain Institution, a School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
I did.

It took me a long time to finally change my mind about the diploma. Actually, it took a certain guy that was interested in me. He had dropped out of school and was working. He convinced me that it was a privilege and a blessing that I was doing a diploma. “Many people can’t even afford it”, he said. With time, I believed him and I embraced it.

Though I took longer than I expected to graduate due to COVID, I actually realized that the Pandemic was a blessing in disguise. Instead of two, it took me three and a half years. During the pandemic, I worked at a popular radio station. I also spent more time on my Internship and Research projects. Finally when schools reopened, we had a graduation ceremony at school. My highest GPA was 4.80 and I had a 4.15 CGPA.

Everything I had wanted to achieve with my degree, I got with this diploma and more:

1. I wanted to graduate with excellent results, and I did.
2. I wanted to have a job and work before graduation, and I did.
3. I had so much time to grow, learn and get well acquainted with the world outside of school.

To be honest, I don’t think I would have achieved all this if I had stayed at the University. While there, they kept us quite busy. We had a class schedule of morning to late evening and on weekends. There was no time for me to get a job or get involved in any activity that brought in money.

Looking back, I am so grateful to God that I never got my way. This other route taught me humility and to trust God every step of my campus journey. In the end, everything pieced out perfectly. I feel so happy and fulfilled and everyone around me can testify that I am a better version of myself.

Trust God when it doesn’t make sense;-especially when it doesn’t make sense.

The End.

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