Throughout secondary school (SS), even though I was the best student in mathematics, physics, chemistry, and many other subjects, I also liked fashion on the side! So much was my love for fashion that I designed my own clothes and had my tailor sew them for me. It actually seemed I was more passionate about fashion than I was about Math. Should I have pursued fashion as a career path?
Not a chance, in the Nigeria of the time! So, my formal interest in fashion died a natural death. Fashion as an undergraduate major was unthinkable at the time and there was no university degree program in it in Nigeria. Fast forward to today, people advice students to follow their passion. However, there are a few reality checks here.
Reality Check I: Your passion has to generate enough revenue for you eventually, otherwise you will not be able to take care of your financial needs.
Reality Check II: Most SS students don’t have dream careers besides perhaps the visible professionals they see at work every day: teachers, nurses, doctors, policemen, and so on. In situations where students do have dream careers, those careers are usually not matched to the talents of the students.
Reality Check III: All people do not have the same talent. I am yet to see a stupid person. Knowing your talent is important in your plans for the future. Unfortunately, it is not a trivial matter determining why God brought you into this world. If an activity falls within your domain of talent, you will be very good at it with hard work, it comes to you almost naturally, you are happy when you do it, and you probably have signs almost from birth! Competing in your area of talent is much more effective, especially when you combine this with extreme hard work and dogged persistence that knows no such thing as failure.
Reality Check IV: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields take the front row. Like it or not, we are in the digital age, and this will remain so for the foreseeable future. In fact, the combination of engineering and technology leads to the situation where many jobs have been taken over by robots and machines. Fortunately, we need STEM majors to program these machines.
STEM graduates get paid a lot more than others, and the job prospects are much better, at least in developed countries, where STEM graduates are actually utilized. For example, in the U.S., the typical starting salary of a mechanical engineer is almost twice that of a historian or archeologist.
If your talent is outside of STEM, you could pursue a major that would eventually allow you to work with/for the STEM-based industries. For example, law or business professionals can specialize in high tech industries.
Reality Check V: We will forever need the medical professionals. Thus, this is a great major, if you have some talent for the pre-requisite subjects.
Reality Check VI: Underutilization of STEM graduates by the labor market! Many third-world countries cannot engage most of their STEM graduates. The tell-tale of a clueless country is simultaneous high level of graduate unemployment and high level of underdevelopment.
Reality Check VII: Graduates are not very competitive skill-wise compared to their counterparts in countries like the U.S. or France.
So, what will I do as a secondary school student, say in Nigeria, today? Difficult as it may be, I will try to identify my talent, using the suggestions given above. With the help of parents, teachers, and more experienced people, I will develop a humongous and extremely ambitious vision around my talent, of who I want to be in the future. Since the vision will be based on my talent, I will be superbly confident that I can achieve my future goal. I will then work insanely hard to obtain distinctions in ALL the subjects I take in SS, of course including the ones related to my vision. I will study at least 12 hours every day, including weekends and holidays. I will not allow anyone to waste my time on things that are not related to my achieving my vision and getting excellent grades in my coursework. I will laser-focus on my goals and will not be discouraged by temporary setbacks.
With the excellent grades in my exams, I will prepare hard and take the SAT and IELTS or TOEFL exams, so I can apply to study in one of the best universities in America. I will investigate financial aid opportunities. I will return to Nigeria to start a technology business (even if I am not a STEM person) that can eventually employ tens or hundreds of thousands of people.
Unfortunately, Nigerian universities are not there yet. The institutions are cash-strapped and many of the lecturers are not well-trained. In the STEM majors, especially, virtually all Nigerian institutions lack effective practical exposure (labs and facilities) for their students. Moreover, relatively few industries exist in Nigeria to absorb any well-trained STEM persons. So, employment creation is a huge part of the equation.
