Tuesday 22 May 2012

Free at last!

I'm no longer a student.

Any reading I do henceforth is for fun, and therefore it's probably just gonna be comments on facebook - not much change from when I was doing a degree then!

It's so weird, so surreal to think that I have done all I could ever do to attain this much coveted degree. It feels like the culmination - not of 3 years of study away from home, but of 17 years of study since childhood. For students like me, with parents like mine, this was the target. Everything else a means to this end, not to be mistaken for sufficient accomplishment. I could never turn to my Dad at the end of high school or college and say "hey Dad, this is it, I'm done learning. Getting a job." He's Nigerian, he would have just looked at my face. That's all. Just looking at my face would have given me the lecture a thousand words could never express. BUT NOW, I've gone as far as my Dad has ever required of me (although now he asks for a Masters or second degree).

And it's now I think that I feel true ownership of my life. Even how I choose to spend tomorrow, is finally a choice I make answerable to me and me alone. There's a fear - I don't know if any of you have experienced it before. Where you look at your life in the next 5, 10, 50 years and feel like what you do or don't do tomorrow will be responsible for how much your life sucks or rocks in the years to come.

I'm not much a fan of fear. I'm not much a fan of looking so far ahead, but it creeps up on me when my brain is idle. Despite the daunting reality of actually having to leave the student bubble and grow up, I'm excited in this moment that it is all complete. Stage 1 of mission: life, is done and until I decide to be responsible and dedicate myself to the job hunt - BRING ON THE SUMMER!

"Free at last, free at last, Thank God Almighty we're free at last" - Martin Luther King Jr. 

2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. thanks!
      any suggestions on what I should do with my free time? I'm sure my parents would like me to "do something with my life"?

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