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.