Some Requisite Admonition for Freshers
It is with utmost elation that I congratulate you, the new students, on your admission to any of Nigeria’s fairly viable lighthouses of knowledge. I can wager it at any time that such feat is not a cinch, what with the mammoth number of those desperately seeking admission. You are warmly welcomed. As you are probably fully aware, you are now on a totally different terrain. It is in view of this bald fact that I consider it appropriate to plant on your virginal mind some seeds of admonition which I am persuaded will contribute positively to the realisation of the very purpose for which you came to the higher institution.
First is that you must understand that a university is a place where you can be made or marred. It follows from this that the way you comport yourself, go about your primary business here, and relate with people will be part of what will determine whether you will be successful on your mission here or come a sad cropper. If your choice is to make a success of your sojourn in your desired school, you must note that the making process unavoidably requires solid discipline, genuine sacrifice, implacable determination, coordinated assiduity, and unalterable contentment.
To be made (that is to successfully achieve your primary objective) in this university where, like any other place, there are tempting razzmatazz, which requires that you cut your coat according to your cloth. You will require the virtue of perseverance, for as you must know, life here too will not be a straight-line graph – your road will be rough! In other words, the path to the success plain of your academic pursuit is just like a mountain carpeted with okra soup. Only undivided focus, persistence and grit will see you through this overtly slippery path. You cannot travel this path successfully if you mind trivial and inconsequential matters of this environment.
Second, make up your mind that for the number of years you will spend here you will not concentrate on acquisition of material things, but necessarily on acquiring the gems of enduring knowledge. Friend, concentrate on being and not on having, after all when you are you will have. It will be an optimal misplacement of priority (the disease sorely afflicting many a young Nigerian) if you take a fat bank account, wardrobe teeming with different attires in vogue and many other ostentatious articles as your supreme pursuit.
To concentrate on being and not on having entails occupying yourself always with the very purpose that brings you to the institution. Therefore, when you ought to be in the lecture room or library, it will be self-defeating to be comfortable at a shindig. Your assignments will have to be promptly done by you. If you will not put the cart before the horse, there is every need to plan your time. Those who want to be and later have always respect their time.
Third, as you acclimatise yourself to your institution world, you will certainly come across many anachronistic minds who will like to skew your mind to make you agree with them that a university is a place where you chiefly come to make money while you learn sparsely. They will tell you that what matters is the certificate and not the acquisition of quality and lasting knowledge. They will tell you that what matters is the certificate and not the acquisition of quality and lasting knowledge.
They will orate sweepingly on why you must not “punish” yourself with the good practice of self- developing your mental faculty or furnishing your storehouse of knowledge with useful ideas. You will be shown the “glory of this world”. But you cannot afford to give in to such sweet betise. The opposite of what they impress on your mind is the path that you must walk. That is how to fulfil your mission, become responsible and be better positioned to meet both your needs and those of the broader society.
Fourth, I charge you to be prepared at all times to do your best and in return get the best in your course of study. The way to get the confidence to face the world is to be the best in what you do. It is the way to get noticed in the increasingly shrinking labour market by organisation and companies who are looking for those who have the skills, expertise, or ideas they want. As a gatherer of resources who is expected to be a producer of viable ideas, you should not be satisfied with passing exams alone. No, you cannot leave this campus and face the world as such a mere possessor of good grades but with weak ideational capacity.
Now this explains why you must invest in books. Tell you what, most of the books you will need to buy cost the earth. Here is where you will need to sacrifice and deny yourself. You cannot have two irons in the fire here. Given the economic reality of our continuously assailed country, it may be difficult, if not totally impossible, for you to buy the latest expensive handsets, foot wares, clothes, and what not and still have enough money to buy those equally costly books.
May I frankly teach your mind that students who are genuinely desirous of being the best in theft studies hardly complain or suddenly begin to pussyfoot when it comes to investing in books? Nor do they question the rationale behind the recommendation of books by their lecturers. In fact, such students do very well that the books they have to sometimes inconvenience themselves to buy on their own and painstakingly read if they are not to wonder about with half learning are more than the ones their lecturers will ever recommend to them. For them, the university is what it is: a place where those who detest ignorance in all its varied colourations come to ardently seek knowledge.
Unless you want to easefully join the broad lane of the non-starters (curiously they often erroneously think they deserve the best in any station), in which case you cannot have your cake and eat it, you must as of necessity distinguish yourself by making a real investment in knowledge. That is the only investment that never fails Nigeria’s peculiar socio-economic woes or not! Let me repeat this: if you will emerge from this university as around and sound doctor, lawyer, educationist, nurse, political scientist, etc., your mind and library must inescapably grow at the detriment of your wardrobe and anything that is of less importance in the scheme of all that is essential in the making of an achiever.
Fifth, to be the best in your career requires discipline. As it is often said, when discipline declines, destiny decays. It is doubtful whether a person whose life is alien to the virtue of discipline in all areas can make any meaningful mark in life. Self-discipline requires that you do not gratify your fleshly desire all the times it announces its presence. There are times you will not eat certain dainties, nor give your eyes to sleep. Fiscal discipline is also important; it is not all that is sold and that you can afford that you should buy. In all, cultivate discipline in the use of your time.
You do not have to rob Peter to pay Paul. I add that promoting religious activities above your primary goal here is an ill wind that will blow you disaster. Before you scream “get thee away from me Satan”, mull over this: for all your activities on this campus, you surely need the principle of balancing. More than any other person, you are better positioned to determine what you will become at the end of your programme in your respective institutions.
Author
