WHAT DEGREE ARE YOU TAKING? WHICH ONE WILL YOU TAKE HOME?

WHAT DEGREE ARE YOU TAKING? WHICH ONE WILL YOU TAKE BACK HOME?

“I got into roadside kiosk to buy some mango fruits, and before long, I saw a woman walking from the direction I came from, with a small child who was walking quite faster than her. I heard her say to the child, “Degree, wait for me.” This captured my attention, and my curiosity won’t let me cease inquiring why she called the child ‘Degree’ and this what she told me, “Hmm! I sent his mother to the university, and this is what she brought home.”.” This is a common message which has been going around in WhatsApp.

The above message carries more truth than anyone can realize. I’m sure most of the people who read it must have considered it as a mere joke. But this is more than a joke. It actually poses a question to every university student on what degree one will take home from the university. When I read that message, that is what it communicated to me; that I might be very happy telling people that I take Bachelor of Science in Economics and Statistics, while in the real sense I will take a different degree back home. Is there anything difficult to understand here? I don’t think so. You do understand how it is possible to take a particular degree program in the university and take home a different one at the end of your four, five or six years of study, don’t you? If you don’t, let me show you.

Take a minute or two, think about your past. I know it is not so good to remember the past, but at times it becomes necessary so as to know ourselves. As I will always insist, no rational human being has a future without clear knowledge of who he/she is. Now, do you remember the first time you walked into a classroom? How did you feel then about education? Compare it to your current attitude towards education. Are they the same? What changed? You grew up? Maybe. But think of this, your mother or father escorting you to school every morning on foot, or if you were lucky enough, in a car. They did that not because it was your right, but because they saw a future for you, even though you couldn’t see it yourself. For those of us who grew up in poor/humble families, think of how your parents struggled to keep you in school. I will repeat, that wasn’t your right, it was their hope for a future for you.

From your childhood, your parents, teachers and elderly people have always been pushing you to do this or that, even if it were for your own benefit. With a childish mind, you could never have known being pushed to study is for your own good. You couldn’t have known being forced to be disciplined is for your own good. Or could you have known that being forced to stay at home was for your own good? Of course not. The difference between then and now is obvious; you’re now a grown up. You don’t need to be pushed, right? Yeah, it is not necessary because you know what is for your own personal benefit, what is right and what is wrong.

After your parents or guardians struggled with you through your primary and secondary education, trying to secure a future for you, seeing it for you when you couldn’t, they finally release you to the university, so you can see the future for yourself. This is when many change their programs of study in disguise. They forget their parents’ past strains to see them where they are and let their lusts overcome them. They forget what future they need and live a lie. They forget themselves and try to become other people they are not. They forget exactly everything they shouldn’t and all they remember now is how an alumnus in high school use to tell them how campus life is ‘sweet’, or how a desk mate urged him that alcohol is so interesting to drink. They forget themselves, and that means they forget their future too.

When you get to campus, why would you think you’re the first ever to earn that freedom in campus? Remember it is freedom with responsibility. When you forget yourself, your past and what takes you to the university, you freely offer yourself as a living sacrifice and a slave to peer influence and lusts and desires of the body. This is when you end up graduating a ‘weed’ addict while you went to study Economics and Statistics, or you take a baby, or babies, back home while you were to study Nursing, or you take a corpse back home, while you were to become an engineer, or you graduate in prison while you were to become a teacher, the only hope of the family. This is when you graduate an irrational non-reasonable being while you went to study law, or you graduate hopeless because you’re HIV positive while you were to become a journalist.

Now you know how this is possible, right? You can make a difference, I know it. You know what took you to the university, don’t let it get off your mind. You know yourself, don’t let anybody or anything replace that fact with an illusion. If you do, you’ll end up taking home a degree that nobody will be willing to talk to even think of. You will live to regret the opportunity you lost for the rest of your life. You know as well as I do, that opportunity comes once, no other will ever come again. If you had lost the track, don’t panic, you’ve had this information early enough, you can decide to change. It is you who has the key to your future, no one else? Why don’t you forget those drugs, why don’t you dump those ‘hooker hoodlums’ you hung around with in campus? Why don’t you decide to let go the midnight bashes and raves you attend? Do it and you will unlock the future meant for you.

I wish you could all view the four, five or six-year period in campus to be a very short time. Too short that all our desires and lusts can wait. Too short that there’s no time to waste if we’re to make a future out of our time in campus. Too short that we can only concentrate on matters that build up our programs of study. I wish we could have the same attitude towards lust as the lazy students have towards class assignments; they can always wait. I promise you, I will admit that you’re a million times stronger than me if you overcome your desires, while I overcome a thousand enemies of mine at once, you have my word. All the best dear one, fight for your future.