Hello everyone,
My name is Timi and I’m 17 years young.
I stumbled onto Radar yesterday and I couldn’t help but join.
Right now, I’m in need of some useful advice.
I graduated high school in July and I couldn’t get admitted into the university due to the fact that the university I applied to blatantly disregarded regular admission protocol and decided to create its own rules.
Although it hurt a little, It didn’t really matter to me because I never really cared about getting into the university.
To me, Nigeria’s educational system seems like an absolute ‘fuckery’: poor facilities, outdated curriculum and “professors” who teach knowledge which has no application in Nigeria today.
To make matters worse I can hardly find any graduate around me whose college degree adds meaningful value to.
My elder siblings have either partially or fully deviated from the courses they studied in the university.
My sister abandoned Agriculture for a career in Education and my brother is currently abandoning Geography for tech and programming.
Honestly, I’d love to bypass university and spend my time improving myself and acquiring new skills. The only reason I’d love to attend a university is to cure my current loneliness
I’ve also observed that most fresh graduates are plagued by a chronic poverty mentality. A vast majority of them think that earning 50k a month as an entry level staff is actually a laudable achievement. For Gods sake, 50k can’t even buy a f*ckin’ ps4 at 50% off.
Right now, I work as an Intern somewhere in Ikeja and I own a blog which generates a rather massive traffic ( I actually view zero as a massive number) because I can’t really turn it into what I want. I plan to turn it into a blog that provides advice and inspiration for Nigerian teens like myself but I lack experience and ideas.
Please, I need someone to convince me to attend College
thanks
It’s nobody’s job here to convince you to attend college.
If you want to fuck up your life, by all means go ahead.
I’m not sure how observant you are at 17, but most kids notice a lot, so I’ll assume you do too.
If you intend to spend majority of your life in Nigeria, you should have noticed by now it’s nigh impossible to get most positions without a university degree.
Not that the point of going to university is to get a job, but it’s a necessity for most things that pay money in adult life.
Not only that, you’ll be doing yourself a disservice because university is meant to teach you how to think critically, how to study things, and investigate ideas and form theories about them, test those theories, etc, and draw informed conclusions.
These are all skills you’re going to need if you want to be fairly successful.
Most Nigerian universities are shit. This is true.
Your best hope is attending a decent university abroad.
The fact that you didn’t get into school this year is irrelevant. Lots of people take gap years. I took a gap year myself to intern at a tech company before college.
If I were you, I’d spend the next year preparing for SATs / IB, developing a list of decent but affordable schools, and acing my applications, and hopefully getting a partial or full scholarship or raising funds.
You could also bypass this by taking a couple of techdegrees or Nanodegrees online (Udacity offers Nanodegrees in various programming disciplines, Treehouse lessons are affordable at $25/a month, and the Techdegree is $199 a month which is a lot cheaper than a college degree).
Complete those and you might be able to get programming jobs at newer, savvier Nigerian companies, work for a few years and then do college online or in person later.
Or perhaps apply to Andela, which is basically a weird sort of college technically, but more aimed towards turning you into a full fledged programmer with a job to boot.
The point is, just because you can’t attend university now doesn’t mean you shouldn’t realise the value of a strategically well-rounded education.
Otherwise you’ll end up like the millions of useless Nigerian graduates who came before you.
Your blog is shit by the way.
Nobody is going to read it.
Not primarily because of the knowledge, but because the things you will learn in those years, cannot be taught anywhere else.
There is also the social implications. Eventually, all these will be brought to light and the story will be twisted however the society wants to see it.
Going to university is one big lesson that you cannot learn anywhere else.
It will feel like a waste of time. Especially if you’re in a Nigerian school, but when you are done, you will look back and see how much you learnt.
Also, at 17, do yourself a big favour and learn the ultimate lesson.
YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING
You don’t know what is important,
You don’t know what the next 5 years will be
You don’t know what to do
and
You don’t know what you don’t know
In five years time, you’ll see how stupid you were now.
The same way you look back at what was important to you at 12 and laugh at yourself
You may invent something that will make you billionaire at 18. Or you may not. Who knows? Then you won’t need a job and probably won’t need a degree either.
I think the purpose of going to a university is to prove that you have the ability to learn beyond the basics and that you can take up a task and complete it, which is a very important thing if you ask me.
So if you can find other ways to prove this and that way will cost you less then go for it.
True…[quote=“the_Ozmic, post:9, topic:9649”]
You may invent something that will make you billionaire at 18. Or you may not. Who knows? Then you won’t need a job and probably won’t need a degree either.
[/quote]
Harsh but necessary…
If you do find another way please don"t forget to DM me…
I don’t like school either bro but this is 9ja, i advice you to attend except you are planning to invent something…wait you might invent while in school, afterall jobberman guys started jobberman while they were in school.or [quote=“sugabelly, post:3, topic:9649”]
apply to Andela
[/quote]
@sugabelly did a good job of telling you why you should go to school. My 2 cents is what you should do when you get to school
I check your blog and noticed your content is more of success stories that many teens might find interesting. Keep it up. Here are more ideas for you when you get to school.
Learn how to lead yourself and other people. Join JCI or any organisation where you can show exemplary leadership. Be the first to volunteer, and during elections contest. These will teach you a lot about working with people, and taking risks.
If you choose to school in Nigeria, no matter your course of study, be involved in tech. Based on recent history, Google is in most schools, via GDG or any “ambassadorhip” program. Use the opportunity to learn new stuffs.
Spend your data bundle wisely. Go to Coursera.org, edX and other MOOC platforms and learn stuff. Acquire certification, many of which are free. As you know, these are the skills that employers actually need, not your B.Sc
Take your blog to school. Write and horn your skills. Use your blog to build a personal brand, chronicle your journey and earn yourself an “expert” status.
My personal biggest regret was the “triangle lifestyle” on campus — my life revolved around class to hostel to fellowship. Instead, try to add more fun to your life, meet people and do a lot of extracurricular activities while keeping your grades balanced. You will likely need those relationships more than your grades.
Okay, now you just sound negative. It may not be the best blog talking about successful teens out there, but it’s something. It’s better than zero. And I don’t think it looks anything like a malware site. What are the pointers of a malware site?
Also, instead of just giving negative feedback, make it constructive, tell him what needs to be changed and what needs to be improved. I think that would benefit him more. That is if you care.
Are you shitting me?
I have one of the oldest and most well known blogs to ever come out of Nigeria.
I think I’ve earned the ability to tell what is a good blog and what is not a good blog.
Nobody is going to read the current blog he has, I can guarantee you that.
He’s not writing about anything interesting, unique, or even useful.
Well over half those stories look like copy and pastes from meme news aggregator type sites.
He can delete everything he has on his site right now, draft a proper plan for what he wants his blog to be about, and start over from scratch. There, is that constructive enough for you?
Madam. You do know that you are talking to a kid right? right? He is 17 or did you mis-read it as 71? You have made your point. The young man is not disputing the facts all over the thread. Stop taking a scope fitted sawed off shotgun to a toothpick fight.
By the way
Do you by any chance own one of the under listed blogs?
I wish someone had told me half the things I said to him when I was 17.
Lmao. The only decent blog on that list you mentioned is BellaNaija.
Just because a blog does insane numbers doesn’t mean it’s not a shit blog.
Linda Ikeji and Ladun Liadi’s blogs are dogshit any day of the week.
If Nigeria didn’t have sky high illiteracy rates they wouldn’t be the top blogs in Nigeria.
The fact that these are the number one sites in Nigeria are because the average Nigerian simply cannot manage to read anything beyond the first grade level of most of the material on Linda and Ladun’s blogs, so you can fling your list of “most successful blogs” in my face all you want.
I can name 25 Nigerian blogs that are infinitely better blogs with superior content that you might never have heard of but will win the long game in Nigerian content ultimately as long as their creators don’t stop writing.
I’m actually disgusted I have to debate this on Radar.
It’s starting to feel like we’re letting Nairalanders in
You do know that you have to be literate to read blogs? right? right?
Yeah, right. I agree. But what about your blog tho? Is it the shit?
Yeah, insult the average Nigerian for your long term blogging failures.
Yes, I can name too e.g sissiyemie, misstechy, woahnigeria, naijasinglegirl. I can do this all day. Guess what? Your long term blog that you were so quick to boast about won’t be on that list. You told him that his blog is not interesting and no one will visit it. Guess what? I went to your blog and by all the available measuring tools online, nobody gives a shit about what your write either. If I had to pick between this kid’s blog and yours. I will pick his.
The irony
The ignorance of this statement. Everyone visits nairaland. Everyone (Nigerians).
Rant
Everyone, and by that, I mean everyone is out for success with their products, hustles etc. It’s not up to you to determine that success yardstick. The market does. Insult them all you like all day but at the end of the day, everyone will love to buy a 90 million naira whip. Ego/personal standard doesn’t pay the bills. Give the great unwashed horde what they want. Do you want to argue that TMZ is a bastion of intellectual/academic discourse? Really smart people read gossip too.
Being rude does not equate to being smart. Let that sink in. It must suck to have a life where I will feel the need to go all out and hurt a 17 year old on a forum just to feel good about myself. That must be a very sad life
You can be civil when giving out advice. You can interlace it with humour/light sarcasm but you don’t have to put people down to massage your inferiority complex/fractured ego
