DON'T TRAP YOUR KIDS IN DOGMA

The fact that parents have got enough crap from us to handle makes me respect them a lot, but most parents fail to understand that their kids are individuals with unique abilities, tastes, opinions, goals, dreams and life path in general (as if that was not obvious enough). This could make them think that they are offering their kids the best and setting them up for a very successful life when in fact, they are doing the exact opposite.

In the country, to go through high school to college requires that the individual goes through series of exams which is ok, plus it's also like that in other places.

The problem comes when the results are out and the kid involved doesn't make the grade required to go for degrees like medicine, engineering, law and other degrees that are usually sort for. I wouldn't have any problem with the person trying over and over again if the degree that he or she is retaking the exams for is the course he or she really wants to do, but you see! in most cases, that's not the case.

Most of these individuals were forced to go for such degrees by their parents.

Parents could be forcing their kids to do one of these professional degrees just because of the mere fact that their kid would be the first graduate in that degree in their village or because the parents themselves weren't able to do those degrees but wished they did or because of other ridiculous reasons, trust me the reasons are always ridiculous. These reasons are both frustrating and funny though.

I don't know if they need a rabbi to tell them that their kids are unique or sooth sayers to announce to them that their kids have different career paths as individuals (usually they are always waiting for the later). It will also be very wrong for parents to be comparing their kids to another, not even if they are identical twins.

As a result of this I have seen people that stopped playing football because their parents said that they had to go through medical school, I have seen potential photographers that never came into existence because they were told that they won't make enough living from it, I have come in contact with writers that gave up because they were told that writing wasn't highly rated in the country, what about entrepreneurs that died off because they were told that they had to graduate and get a job to ensure a stable income. They are always seeing these things from a poverty, an ignorant and/or a 'let's play safe' point of view.

The individuals involved in situations like this are left tired and frustrated. I hope that sooner rather than later, things start taking turns for the better because this is not how torturous life is meant to be. Parents  have to realise and respect the fact that their kids are individuals with their own personal goals, aims, opinions and ambitions in life.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the result of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And the most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is sDOecondary" ~ Steve Jobs. 

STAY WEIRD, STAY DIFFERENT, BE PRAGMATIC

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College and school in general is for learning and acquisition of skills, but are you not aware that it's not the only place skills are acquired?, I mean, don't you know that college isn't the only place where education takes place?.

There are different places where you can even get specific skills you need to move on in life to avoid all sorts of wasting being done in college by most people (especially when you know that the college isn't for you). I don't like it when people behave like college or schooling is the holy grail, well it's important, but it definitely ain't for everyone.

We all have different life paths to take and because people close to you went to college doesn't mean that you also have to. There is so much you can do and there isn't time to waste going to college when you know that you are gonna be better off elsewhere. So just because others are going through the process and graduating with degrees from colleges doesn't mean that the process or degree is meant for you. In fact, there are many things others do that you don't do.

You just have to be pragmatic and not always follow rules and protocols. There are some rules and procedures you won't be able to keep up with and that's completely ok.

Think of how not fun life is gonna be or how mundane and monotonous each day is gonna seem if there were no diversifications or differences or if there was a manual which if you follow, will guide you to live your life without any uncertainty or if everything was the same all the time. 

We are all different and you are just among the condiments used to spice up the big soup (the earth and all within).

The thing that matters at the end isn't the degree or the prestige gotten from college, but your ability to find your passion and execute and the people you affected positively through your execution.

"The two most important days in your life is the day you were born and the day you figure out why." ~ Mark Twain.

You have to remain different and show case your talent and skills for the world to see and take note of. I don't like it when youths keep beating themselves up just so that they don't appear awkward or weird. If you let dogmatism rule your life, you will have so many regrets swarming across your fragile mind on your death bed or when you are no longer able to execute (for any reason).

"Stay weird, stay different" ~ Graham Moore (academy award winner for the best adapted screenplay, 2015)

IN A WORLD OF OPPORTUNITIES, WE BECOME OUR OWN LIMITATION

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There is this obvious problem with our regular system that I observed. When we are ready to move into senior secondary school, it's kinda mandated that we choose whether we wanna be part of science or the art department. It seems like an easy decision to make and seems not to affect much at that time, but I have noticed how it goes on to cause a massive ripple effect in some people's life as they progress into college.

The entire life of an individual is almost decided at that point and is dependent on this cheap decision which is ridiculous in my own point of view. If the individual involved chooses science or art, depending on what the case may be, the individual is expected to go through that field (science or art) for eternity. This decision limits a person to the range of courses based on the particular field in question and this is not a good idea.

I believe that those early years of ones life is very crucial for exploring all sorts of things and doing several new stuffs. That is how passions and interests are discovered. With this system, the exploratory part of life could be stripped from several people in a quest to choose a particular field when they might not even know much about those fields and career. Unfortunately, many become lost, pursuing what they don't wanna be doing and as a result only a few realise this and even fewer people get to find their way back. 

I have also noticed how easily youths can be pressured to go for a career they don't want to be doing. This is quite tricky, parents could be vocal about what they want their kids to be. The tricky part is that when their kids hear this, the information might just get registered in their head and they could also second their parents instantaneously, especially when they the career in question sounds cool to them. Then later, when they are fed up with it, they force themselves to like that particular career, maybe to avoid disappointing their parents. This is worse when the kid is a parent pleaser. 

Afterwards, the kid becomes completely lost and doesn't even know what will be the right career choice for him or her because they have swam in the wrong ocean for a very long time. 

You will be doing yourself a huge favour if you choose to break away from any sort of limitation and explore an different horizons, till you find the career you love and marry it.

THE ULTIMATE QUOTE

A wise man once said

"We are all self-made but only the successful will admit it." ~ Earl Nightingale.

This struck me when i saw it, and it's not like it's a whole new discovery, it's just that I never thought of it this exact way. The organisation of the quote made it glare more and it also had this little bit of fun element in it.

Try asking an unsuccessful individual the thing that kept them in the position they find themselves currently and you will hear all sort of stories about things going wrong, things that didn't go as planned, situations that were out of their control. Fingers will be point in all direction except within.

The case is quite different when you ask the same question to a successful individual. They will tell you about the hardship and dark moments they went through, incidents and thing that spurn out of their control, but they will also tell you how they worked tirelessly covered in sweat to try and fix things and to overcome the harsh storm because they believed they were in control and responsible for their destiny (admitting to being self-made ultimately).

So basically, we have the self-made poor man and the self-made rich man, the self-made looser and the self-made winner, the self-made unhappy and depressed individual and the self-made happy and enthusiastic one, the self-made problem solver and the self-made nagging and complaining individual, a self-made wise individual and a self-made foolish individual.

So we are self-made anyways, just that it's only the successful that will admit it. Begin to mould yourself into an individual you will be ultimately proud of when you look back in retrospect. Begin to shape yourself into a product that you're gonna cherish, begin to build a product of yourself that will be invaluable when it becomes a finished product.

The limitations that you really have is yourself and your imaginations, don't fail yourself. The worst moments in life are those moments in life are those moments are moments of regrets not moments of failure. Don't put yourself in a position where if you look back at your life you will be in a position to use that phrase 'had i known', knowing that there were things that you would have done but didn't do them because of whatever reason. The trick here is that when you look back and consider things that you could have done differently, they might have either succeeded or failed even if you did them the way you are thinking, but there is no way for you to know anymore. You will end up using your imaginations and regret will become your new name.

Like i said previously the pain from regrets is greater than the pain from failures. So that doing that thing that you have in mind right now!.

MAKING DECISIONS AND WORKING TOWARDS PERFECTION

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You know one thing about making decisions?, you don't have to make the right one, you just have to make one.

If there is a common job that we all have, it's the job of decision making. We make considerable amounts of decisions in our daily life, from micro-decisions which we might not even realise (like choosing to go out or stay at home or choosing to skip a class) to mega-decisions which are very important (like choosing a career). 

It would be nice if we could continually remind ourselves the fact that we don't necessarily need to make the right decision all the time, most of us want to hit the bull's eye all the time when it comes to decision making. You know what? those people you deem great were forged from furnaces of trial and error. They didn't get it spot on all the time when it comes to decision making.

Trial and error is a very important part of our learning process. We are not perfect so we just keep working towards perfection everyday of our life. Look at how I view it, I see imperfection and perfection from a spectrum point of view. Imperfection at one end of the spectrum and perfection at the other end and then between them is a mixture of the both.

Considering this, that means that we are born imperfect, then we work our way towards perfection at the other end of the spectrum. And because I have not seen a perfect man yet, I assume that we never hit the perfect spot at the other end of the spectrum. That means that we keep working towards perfection throughout our lives.

So in the course of our lives, errors must occur and it isn't something we should be scared of, rather it should be an experience worth learning from, you should get hold of your life and start making decisions.

Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we catch excellence. ~ Vince Lombardi.

UNEMPLOYMENT ISSUES IN THE COUNTRY CAN BE SOLVED, NOT ONLY BY THE GOVERNMENT.

YOUTHS SHOULD STOP FEELING ENTITLED AND START FEELING RESPONSIBLE:

There is this feeling of entitlement that intoxicates the youths in the country. Everybody wants things to get done, but nobody wants to get them done. Usually in the case of the Nigerian youths, it seems like the ability to solve existing problems is missing or deactivated. When you ask a youth why things are as bad as they are, the youth always blame the government. There is this sense of extreme delegation where most of youths don't see the need to get involved and solve problems or create opportunities on their own, yet such an individual would love to see a silicon valley in Nigeria. I feel like the youths aren't seeing the need to become job creators and that has been a massive draw-back in the economy. Using this model, your grand-parents will grow expecting the government to provide jobs for them, your parents will do the same and then you will also end up doing the same and with the ever growing population of the country, the number of unemployed individuals will always out number the vacant job posts. We need more of Dangote, Innoson, Sim Shagaya, etc. in the country.

THE INFLUENCE OF SCHOOL SHOULD NOT BE OVERRATED:

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with going to school and getting educated. The problem is that in Nigeria, it's influence is often overrated and it is often assumed that you will never make it in life once you don't have a bachelor's degree. You don't even need to be a genius to know to that assumption is wrong. Our uniqueness should count, everybody can't be forced to complete school especially when that individual has or wants a career that has nothing to do with the conventional schooling system. When the hype given to college degrees is minimised, then people will know that they can go on and create a career that they love for themselves which will save them that time of unemployment that comes after college (which may last for awhile or be permanent), especially if you are in a field where you are really average or just not good enough to make the cut because of one reason or the other.

THE EXPONENTIAL GROWTH OF THE POPULATION SHOULD BE COMBATED:

The population growth in the country has been steady and is not showing any signs of slowing down. It looks like people who can't keep to abstinence as a birth control method don't know other ways to avoid having unwanted babies. This is where your family planning skills are being put to the test and youths in our country suck at this. The unemployed youth will have a baby leaving me clueless on the intended process to adequately care for the baby. There are several weapons to combat this and they include birth control pills, condom, vasectomy and female and male condom to name a few. Youths can also help move this cause to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. Gone are the days when the number of kids you had were used to measure wealth. This is the 21 century guys!

SOME CAREERS SHOULD NOT BE UNDERRATED AND SHUNED AS THEY HAVE BEEN DONE IN THE PAST

If I go into an elementary school in the country and ask the kids what they would love to be in the future, I will get bored quickly because almost all of them will give me the same reply. You rarely hear things like I wanna be a photographer, a chef, an athlete, a traveler, a writer, a dancer, a drummer etc. Careers such as medicine, law and engineer are all sort for by almost all of them. They are exposed to so little and also told that the former career choices don't make sense. Most of them carry this on into high school and some with little adjustment. These sectors that are sort for the most become over-crowded and when it's time to go to college, most of the youths find it difficult to secure an admission. By this time, all they've ever known was being a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer and then few other career choices. The most painful part is that most of the youths have lost touch with themselves and who they really are. They don't even know what they really wanna be doing anymore and this makes life more difficult and frustrating. Then at the end, most of them settle for their second or third or fourth or even fifth career choices (could be worse than fifth) in college.

MOST PARTS OF THE COUNTRY HAS TO COME ONLINE:

When I mean coming online am referring to internet usage. Due to the fact that most parts of the country are relatively offline, the exposure and resources are minimal. Don't you know that people build empires and legacies online?. The internet has offered opportunities including exposure to many, their are vast resources that could help the lives of several youths once they have regular access to the internet. The inadequate power in the country has also contributed to this issue because the wifi which would have been used by many needs electricity too. The cost of subscribing or getting a data plan is also pretty high and this also discourages the youth from purchasing them. If this problem is solved, then there will be hope for many.

   

DO WHAT YOU LOVE, LOVE WHAT YOU DO.

"You've got to find what you love. And that's is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work will fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any relationship, it just keeps getting better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle." ~ Steve Jobs.

Steve Job's commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005 is one of the many speeches i think all Nigerian youths should listen to. My point of focus here is the doing what you love part of the speech. He was saying that we should do what we love, yes! that cliche of finding your passion, which i think is also underrated.

Just like most of us seek our human-love, the same should be applied to our career. Most people will stop at nothing to ask someone else that they admire out on a date, but when it comes to the career-love aspect, you just don't give a damn! and then you become so reluctant and display so much laxity.

According to what he said, the relationship will only get better and better as time passes by, both for your human-love and your career-love and you know what? this is absolutely true. The relationship between you and the right career for you is also nurtured and improved as time goes by.

When you have the wrong human match, a hostile environment exists most of the time and this is accompanied by constant disagreements and arguments leading to a significant amount of bad stress which ruins your health progressively. The same applies to your career-love, that's why you've got to make the right match. 

It will also be sensible to point out that the journey is not always smooth and filled with milk and honey when you are 'living your passion', just like in a nice and healthy relationship, there are little bumps here and there and challenges also arise from time to time to put your resilience, character and attitude and discipline to the test and to also make you a better, stronger and an improved version of yourself.

"If you wanna shine like a diamond, you gotta get cut like a diamond." ~ Eric Thomas.

You've got to test the waters, avoid any limitations and take as many risks as possible (especially when you have no wife and kids yet) to find your passion and start living it. You won't find your passion by staying in your room all day, watching movies, eating and sleeping all day, it's very necessary that you get the hell out of your comfort zone!. You've got to sort for your career-love genuinely. Your life will never be the same. 

YOUR LIFE, YOUR DESTINY, YOUR CALL.

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See, it sucks that several youths are just wasting their precious time studying courses their parents wanted them to study, it sucks that they are taking exams their parents wanted them to take and going after degrees that they were asked to go for. The privilege of choice gets ripped from them and they live someone else's (usually their parents') life.

I just wish they would become a little bit stubborn and defiant when it comes to issues like this and take career paths their hearts wants and they love.

I have a classmate that said he was studying pharmacy because he was forced to and when his through with it, he will go back home and give his parents the pharmacy certificate and then move on to study what he actually wanted to study (which was computer engineering). That's pretty disappointing, am just worried for him because he will end up wasting years of his life doing what he was forced to do.

In another case, a friend of mine who was at the engineering department changed to business and economics department on his own without the knowledge of his parents. He had to make this radical decision because his father already rebuked him when he said that he would like to be studying business and economics not engineering. I admire his courage in doing this and knowing that he had control of his life and destiny.

I know so many kids that kept taking exams over and over again, just to get into college and study courses recommended by their parents (but not wanted by they themselves). It's disappointing to know that they would be better off somewhere else, doing what they actually love, but have been held beck by the people who brought them into this world.

It's very important the youths know that though their parents might have brought them into this world, they themselves literally have their destiny in their hands. Parents have the responsibility to support and cheer their kids towards achieving goals and dreams they have. It would be much better if parents allow their kids to live lives of their own not the lives of their parents or the lives their parents think they should live.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma-which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others opinion drown your own inner voice. And the most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary". - Steve Jobs.

DEAR PARENTS,

We are thankful to you for bringing us into this world. We are thankful for taking care of us when we were too little and naive, for the provisions you made available to us. We are thankful for even being there even when things weren't very pleasant, because we know how mischievous and non-chalant we can be sometimes and also for making various sacrifices just to make sure we are ok. We are thankful for calling us your own.

There is something we wish you could just do differently, this is something very important to us, our future, well being and happiness depends on it. Though you do everything for us with good intentions, not all of them turn out the way you guys think they would. This particular issue can also be addressed only if you guys just choose to listen to us and try to understand.

The issue of interest concerns our future career choices. We understand why you want us to go to school, attend college and graduate with high honours in 'prestigious' degrees. We understand why you worry when we drop out of college or take career paths you deem sub-class and don't approve. The problem is that you don't understand why we drop out of college, you don't also seem to understand us when we choose different career paths and go for degrees in college that may seem crazy and worthless to you. The worst of all is that you don't understand the negative impacts brought on our happiness when you force us to go through college, do courses and degrees or chase career choices we don't want.

Maybe things evolved too quickly and you didn't catch up fast enough to know that people don't do things anymore because they have to, but because they want to. Degrees are no longer a necessity and with the internet came new paths, opportunities and many other green pastures. We want to be involved with things and jobs that we are happy doing and just live a happy life because we just have one.

So please, get us involved and don't make career decisions for us, consider our happiness and not yours, respect our opinions and don't treat it like they are irrelevant. By doing this, you could save us years of constant writing of application letters without success, unemployment, frustration and depression. Please support us and the career paths we choose to follow and help us get there, we will forever be grateful.

Yours Sincerely, 

Youths, Nigeria.

SCHOOL IS NOT A DESTINY DETERMINING FACTOR

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                          I know that the difference between an illiterate and a literate can be sniffed from afar (pun intended), but I also know that someone who does not go to college is not doomed for life, on the contrary, some people do themselves a disservice by going to college and before I go further, for the records, I do not support illiteracy. In fact, I do my best to promote literacy. Some people understand this fact while others will argue with the last drop of their blood that they've got to get those college degrees to make it in life.

Am in college because I deemed it necessary to acquire some specific skills in order to achieve my dream and not everyone's dream has something to do with college.

I understand why it is this way, many factors come into play, plus youths have been told by their parents that they must earn college degrees because that's the trend or that's how it's meant to be. The fact that the country (Nigeria) is relatively offline doesn't help the situation at hand, as youths are oblivious of the opportunities that lay at their feet, they fail to see second chances offered to many people by life all because of the existence of the internet.

You are expected to have at least a B.Sc. to be considered reasonable in the country, all emphasis are laid on qualifications and capabilities are thrown out of the window. The crippling effect of this is evident when you come to other sectors like sports, traveling, you tubing, arts and photography, e.t.c.

They don't get to know that Steve Jobs (cofounder, former chairman and CEO of apple Inc., cofounder and former CEO of pixar and founder and former CEO of NeXT Inc.) was a drop out or that David Karp (founder and CEO of tumblr) didn't even graduate high school. Nigeria is a country where if you don't even earn those degrees, you will probably become a mechanic's assistant, a peasant marketer or a peasant farmer that is if luck makes you a companion and well, if your not lucky then? you will probably be pushing the wheel barrow or join the street hawkers, but this doesn't have to be this way though. The inbred mentality makes it the way it is.

Youths are meant to be explained to that the world isn't as compact or one-sided as they know it to be just from their limited view point (without the internet) and they are also meant to be told that not completing college education isn't a subject to years of doom. In fact, they might be making the best decision of their life skipping college which they will come to know in retrospect.

So many of the youths who could have easily been athletes or travellers or even seasoned artists and photographers opt to follow the norm and attend college to study degrees that have been associated with high prestige such as medicine, law and engineering.

The aftermath? they end up writing application letters that keeps getting rejected over and over again for most parts of their life and then comes the time where someone has to receive the blame, they effectively put the blame on life, the universe and God.

It's pretty disappointing, considering the fact that the individual would be much happier doing something else and living their dreams and passions, but now the case is different and dogmatism had already rendered them helpless. A call to immediate action is necessary.