THEN AND NOW

Three years ago, I was a school dropout who had spent three years at home because there was nobody to sponsor my education. I had dropped out in my 3rd year and had to watch my coursemates graduate two years later. I tell you this was a hard pill to swallow, and I'm not sure I ever swallowed it completely. In January 2021 I decided to take the bull by the horns and become a man for myself. The shame was so much considering even those who I started before were already graduating and all my juniors who had a four-year course had already graduated up to two sets below my initial set. Coming back to a school where I was so popular was hard, but I told myself “In 2024, I'm going to be a graduate”.

I would be a big liar if I said the journey was easy, and this is not me trying to give a motivational speech, but the truth is looking back at everything now, I'm proud of the man I have become. Although there is a lot I would want to work on in my life, so far so good in the last three years I have learned lessons that many would never imagine in their lifetime. Was it the period I would eat twice a week, or those times I would trek long kilometers because I was not having money? It wasn't just about the money you know, would I talk about the stress of doing two jobs in school just so I could pay for textbooks at least because I was earning a total of 20,000 naira from them and one wasn't a constant Job.

I had to battle depression a lot of times especially those times I was getting threats from lectures because I had not bought their textbooks, or times I missed exams and was publicly disgraced because I couldn't meet up with my tuition fees. I remember vividly when the dean of my faculty came into the exam hall and in the middle of the crowd of over three hundred students was looking for me to seize my paper because I had not bought his textbook. All I wanted to do was graduate even though my parents did not have the means to sponsor my education. If I said I was focused during that period I would be lying too. I went from an A+ student to a B+ because I had to prioritize.

Skipping classes for work became a normal routine, and some of the lecturers who knew me from my first year thought I had changed, little did they know that a boy just had to survive the only way he knew how to. Today the story isn't perfect, but it's a lot better. My journey has toughened me up from the boy who had to drop out of school to the man who saw himself through school. Three years ago I saw a life way better than what I'm living now because my imagination would always go faster than me. I would say I'm living 70 % of the life I imagined three years ago, and getting to this point was never an easy one.

FIRST PHOTO CREATED USING CANVA

PHOTO CREDITS ARE MINE

THIS IS MY RESPONSE TO HIVE GHANA PROMPT FOR THE WEEK.