Do you ever wonder why some professions always serve as the ideal “dream job”? We grow up thinking about things like how cool it was to walk with the pride of a Doctor (with the stethoscope around our neck we feel we would be invincible), or to argue in the court of law with the confidence of a lawyer. We see bankers in their luxurious suits and ties well knotted and my oh my we get that fresh anxiety, a sudden need to escape the present and live the dream life. At times, it’s not even about the profession we have a personal affection for but that in which the people around us (usually the parents) constantly sing to our ears. Either ways, we grow up happy, having it in mind that there is a safe and secure future down the road and that we will all be Lawyers, Doctors, Bankers, Engineers, or Nurses.
We erroneously believe that without these so called “high class” professions, the chances of success are slim. We therefore neglect our other potentials and join the multitude in the race to attain them. Along the line, many fallout due to the inability to meet up with the essential prerequisites and where they have It all wrong is the belief that the inability to win the race is synonymous to the inability to succeed, So they allow life’s circumstances push them anywhere and say “after all it is just to get a degree.” This kind of thought would have been alright if they had an inkling as to what to do asides getting a degree or how to make it outside the walls of the University, but no, instead they go on to add “if at all I don’t work with this degree I will definitely get a job, one way or the other” like there are jobs lying around. Sighs, why do we make ourselves preys of circumstances??
Many others who manage to get to the end of the race while feeling like bosses also follow a wrong line of thought by assuming that it was all it took to succeed, like everything else would just fall perfectly in place since they are “professional graduates”, forgetting the current state of the Nigerian economy.
An economy that lacks diversification and reeks of an high level of unemployment among the youth. With so many people chasing these so called professional jobs it becomes next to impossible to provide for all. Nowadays most of those who even have these jobs are underemployed, or what do you call it when someone spends thousands of nairas buying books, paying for an expensive law school, and spending a great deal of time in school only to graduate and receive 25k per month?, do we not see that all these “high class professions” are overrated??
All these efforts would have been worth it if passion was the major drive for going into them, like for the love of saving lives as in the case of a Doctor or penchant for numbers as in the case of a banker, but no, most people just see them as an avenue to make good money and in the light of recent developments where it is difficult to get jobs and underemployment is rampant, there is need for a revolution.
A revolution that will make the youths understand that there is a need to put in effort to stand out in whatever we choose to be, a need to stop following the crowd and be a maverick. You want to be a Doctor? Fine, but don’t be our regular type of Doctor, be better, be more than just a Doctor, bring other things to the table, be creative.
A revolution that involves a change in the mindset of Nigerians, where we all are made aware that it no longer suffices to rely solely on the opportunities our degrees had to offer. There is a need to develop our potentials and widen our horizon, we need to know that all the essentials of success can not be learnt within the four walls of a lecture room and that while we struggle to excel academically , our hearts should be open to other ideas and innovations. When we look around us, we see a lot of people making it through ways we would have considered “far fetched” some years back, like Linda Ikeji a billionaire well known for being one of the pioneers of blogging in Nigeria, an activity she picked up as a past time and has developed to be one of Africa’s foremost news or gossip site (any how you choose to describe it) with a market value of over a billion naira. Or Florence ifeoluwa Otedola (d. J cuppy) a music producer and dj song mixer, with a degree in business and economics but due to her love for music she is running a masters program on music business in other to be more equipped in the industry. The list goes on and on citing people who have followed their passion be it writing, music, stand up comedy or the likes.
There is a need for the society to stop limiting the minds of a growing child and stop making them feel like there are fixed routes to success. Let them develop their talents and explore their potentials, What the Nigeria we live in requires is a break from the norm and trail blazers to open up new paths for the future generations to thread on.
SALAMI, MUTEEAT.
Leave a Reply