You Define Your Success
Earlier this morning, in a post on Facebook, my brother Dipo Famakinwa rekindled our academic experience as undergraduates in the mid 1980s at the then University of Ife (later renamed Obafemi Awolowo University), Ife. Even though Dipo was writing about what I will call the evolution of his social life, he indirectly caused a significant number of his course and class mates to realise that we did not allow our initial academic setbacks as students to determine our course in life.
A combination of factors in the 1984/85 session meant that most of my course mates in International Relation (IR) had a Grade Point Average (GPA) of 3rd Class or Pass at the end of our first semester, the Harmattan Semester.
One of those factors is the intrigues and politics of student life in Ife, particularly the experience of students from the Department of International Relations who were hated by lecturers in the Faculty of Social Science piqued with late Professor Olajide Aluko for creating a world-recognised full fledged department out of what they considered a sub-set of Political Science. The usual refrain in the mouth of those Social Science lecturers then was that IR students could not come to their department to score ‘B+ and As’ in their courses. As a result, our lives were made hell. We were deliberately marked down and in some cases, deliberately failed in courses that were compulsory for us to take in our first session as undergraduates. In those days, as Nigerians would say, ‘Who is your father to query the result a lecturer gave you? Who born monkey?’
I failed the same SSC105 course (Mathematics for Social Scientist I), just like Dipo and most of our classmates. To date, it still amazes me how in Harmattan Semester, I got F in a course that serves as a foundation for SSC106 (Mathematics for Social Scientist II), only to get a B+ the Rain Semester of the same session in SSC106. Needless to say that I re-sat SSC105 the following session and passed it.
Unlike other classmates, I, a son of a no nonsense Principal and no nonsense Headmistress, could not hide my SSC105 failure and subsequent SSC106 results from my Dad. There was no acceptable explanation I could give him about my woeful first semester. However, his response to my SSC106 result has continued to echo in my ears:
“Kunle, you always excel in whatever you set your heart to do. You failed that first Mathematics course because you did not have a firm purpose to pass it”.
This response has been a defining song to the way I have approached all life assignments from thereon.
Today, I am proud to say that none of my course mates in Ife at the Department of International Relations allowed our initial academic setback to define the course of our lives. As far as I know, majority (including Dipo) went ahead not only to have astounding academic results graduating from Ife, but also made good success of chosen careers from the late 80s onward.
As such, if you are a youth, and you think that failure in one endeavour should define your life as a failure in every other thing, please have a rethink. Purpose to excel in whatever you lay your hands on legitimately starting from 2017.
Happy New Year to you all.