WHAT’S THE USE?

I was talking to a very good friend of mine some years back who was worried about his educational background. Although his parents were well to do, his father only sent his elder brother to school. At this time, he was about 25 years old. Then I told him to start learning a course so he wouldn’t feel so helpless and to my surprise, he took my advice and learned a course. I remember he told me how he was doing a project management course and how he was happy to be doing it. Four years later he has completed so many other courses and is even doing better than me in landing great jobs as a project manager. He now works with a number of construction companies who took notice of mainly his foreign certifications and are working with him. The last time we spoke he told me he was registering for the National Youth Service Corps as a foreign student when in truth he never really visited the four walls of the higher institution talkless of knowing the experience of facing the headache of the educational system. Although he still had his little struggles, it was nothing compared to the real thing.

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Before I gave him that advice though I have always been of the opinion that the headache we face in school isn’t worth it, the certificates also are not worth it because at the end of the day, they are just laying blocks of what one would face in the real world. But that is not even the major reason why it isn’t worth it. The major reason is that the majority of the time, the educational system (in Nigeria especially) doesn’t always give the majority of students an opportunity to learn, and even the ones with the opportunity to learn can only learn a drop out of the ocean of knowledge. This was the reason after I graduated, I told everyone around me that I wouldn’t be going for my masters, not here, not even outside the country. Instead I will pick courses related to my skill set and become a professional in them. Because the truth is a master's degree in this day and age can be bought and it doesn’t mean one even knows anything about the job they are doing, but a professional certificate comes after a period of learning and certification.

I would prefer to get a result that would boost my career path because I’m not a lawyer or a doctor who from the onset already has a career path and is doing everything to be at the top. I wasn’t even given the opportunity to learn what I really wanted to study as a child even when my result was more than good enough, this is why I can not afford to depend on a system that has very little proof of raising successful people in the real world. The only people that are celebrated by the system, are those who have achieved success in the academic world and the truth is the majority of them have nothing to show for it in the real world so what’s the use?

THIS IS MY RESPONSE TO HIVE LEARNER'S PROMPT FOR WEEK 182 EPISODE 2