“I graduated with first class, but I wasn’t given a job.” — Says a Facebook friend.

She further explained how thousands of Nigerian graduates aren’t using their degrees that they acquired from presitigeous institutions to get jobs.

Everyone trooped in to agree with her.

“Yes! You’re right my sister!” One said.

“I graduated with a first class but I found it hard to net a job in the first five years after graduation. But my peers with lower results got job instantly and are now doing extremely well in the labour market.

“Nigeria is useless!” The second man buttressed.

Now, somewhere inbetween billions of HTML, python, and other codes, in front of screens owned by teens who are two years into school.

They read that post and those comments and they feel destroyed. They’ll feel hopeless. Questionably unsure of what is to be.

Is school really a scam? What’s the point of studying this course when I know I’m not going to put it to good use?

If these graduates are finding it hard in the real world — first class graduates o! — what hope do I have with my GP that is struggling on the tightrope of 3.25?

And that is how someone’s burning light dims because of a facebook post made by a misguided person who was pre-programmed from childhood to think that acquiring a degree is the best and most socially accepted get-rich-quick scheme.

Someone whose childhood was filled with “study hard, graduate, and get a mouth watering job, and you’ll be rich. That’s how the world works.” and they believed that if they spent so many hours consuming textbook theories, mathematical equations, and diagrams, they get a chance to sit on the highest pedestals of wealth. Of power. Of social acceptance and recognition.

Not always entirely true.

A woman was born into this world. Groomed from a young age with the best educational materials and was buttered through the best educational system (but not on a privileged scale) and after over 18 years of reconstruction of experience from kindergarten, primary school, secondary school, university, she comes out with a degree.

Oh goodie!
Let’s go make some CV!
So that my dream company
Would employ me with a mouthwatering salary!

See that rhyme there? That’s how most of our dreams rhyme!

Almost everybody wants to go to school, and at the end of the day want to get an amazing job that pays so much, enough to sustain them, their struggling extended family (if they have a touching background story) and their own lifestyles.

Each year, millions of teenagers gain admission into tertiary institutions, most of them forced by their parents to study course they have no interest in.

But they have no choice because the black man mentality has been so much molded by fear and faux comfort that they believe so much in this one way to satiate their desires.

So many rhymed dreams being muddled up into one and when Vanguard Newspaper comes up with an estimate of the unemployment rate in the country, we all scream, “The government is eating our money! Taking our jobs!”

Agreed, the government is taking our jobs, but is the government supposed to provide employment for Every. Single. One. Of. You?

In a developing country like ours where industrialization is still a struggle, where many few industries are still on the rise, there’s little or no space for white collar jobs.

Most available jobs require harsh hands. They require handy skills.

THE EXACT SAME THING YOU DON’T HAVE.

You spent all your time reading that book, filling your head with texts and texts of knowledge, and then you pour it all in an exam that was designed to see how much you’ve understood from the classes based on the basics and then ideas of what would be required for you to lurch into your own ideas.

But the truth is, you never really learnt anything. You learnt how to calculate because you wanted to pass that exam with an A.

And instead of doing personal research that would have saved you the stress of “after school, what next?” depression stage, you spent it cuddling up with your boyfriend who’s from a family of business tycoons. A boyfriend who is just going to school for a sport and a trophy.

The labour market is like a jungle. It is filled with lions and tigers and bears. The early stage of our development have changed; the times when you graduated from school and you had a job waiting for you. It’s all passed.

The schools are congested with people with the same get-rich goals as you because you all grew up with similar life patterns.

Aside from Grace and connections, there’s every likely hood that you wouldn’t get that mouthwatering job because of that your sick mentality.

Stop watching instagram videos and following Facebook and Twitter influencer drama and start following business blogs and reading books that would aide your practical experience with your line of interest.

Keyword: interest.

Fatten your resume. Nobody cares about your First Class. There is a high number of first class graduates as there is a second class. So you’re not special anymore.

Acquire that skill — I know entrepreneurship isn’t for everybody. So know your niche. Stop listening to rich kid podcasts and spend time listening to you. To your soul.

What am I really good at?

Is there an industry for this interest/skill of mine?

How do I improve and develop my potentiality so that I can penetrate it?

What do I need to be doing every day to program myself for success?

Do I roam about the blogosphere, pouting, lamenting how this country is sick and how the government has deprived me of privileges I don’t really have my name on?

Or I shut down the powerful influencing words from people with broken dreams and be intentional with my grind?

It’s all up to you:

To be a socially accepted android devoid of outside the box thought, pre-programmed with dispositionalism entailing repeated life and behavioral patterns that are in line with the status quo.

Or do you want to be a Titan that shatters the indentured legal slavery by reprogramming yourself to serve your own consensus with no irresistible dependence on your sociopolitical stand or your educational qualifications?

John Dewey 1967 — or there about — said that education is the reconstruction and the reorganization of an experience that adds to the meaning of an experience.

Education is meant to equip. To increase your potentiality. Your MENTAL skill. Education isn’t meant to be a get-rich scheme. The reason why corporate establishments employ scholars in the first place is because they believe that you have been groomed with the necessary tools necessary to uplift their product to the right place.

School nor be scam. Your thinking is.

Written by Kessy Agwam