Special greetings to the house!
This is my entry to the Weekly Featured Content for Week 27 in the Hive Learners community.
The topic is all about balancing study and work.
For someone that studied from a 'not so well family background', I had my fair share of hustling and studying while in school.
I joined the hustle and bubble part of life in school from year one with menial jobs such as clearing of building sites just to get pocket money for sorting out school bills like handouts, textbooks and majorly food. Food was one of my major issue I had in my first season of schooling because home was far for traveling to get raw food stuffs and parents were not financially firm in sending money every now and then.
I had challenges coping with this kinda of work with studies because it's strength & time demanding but I survived it because I always used weekends for it.
At year three, I diversified and joined bricklaying works which paid more. It wasn't funny at all going for that kind of dirty work as a student but I needed the money.
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For year three students, the academic work load has reduced to some extent so I had my chances to myself. They were days I missed lectures just to cover up some work.
One thing that helped me so much to balance up with the academic was my assimilation level, I don't study much to understand a particular topic, so I was using the 'trait' as an advantage to sort out myself. I'd go for work, come back and collect lecture notes from colleagues plus a little explanation from them and everything will fall in place as if I didn't missed lecture.
When they were constructing the stadium in my school, I joined them from the excavation level which I saw my bank account got fattened.
Let me tell you, Schooling in Nigeria without enough money is like begging for water in a desert. Frustration will have its way to your bone marrow.
Final year, I moved on with a more softer work, I joined a laundry business with my current boss.
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Although this was time demanding too but I scaled through, I fixed Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays for this work. I made good money from this work coupled with experience as added advantage.
During all these periods, my night time became my real study time. I adjusted my sleeping time to create space for reading and following up with academic work. It was tough for me at the initial stage but later on my body adjusted.
I graduated with good grades, although not the targeted grade but it's fine because I didn't sort any lecturer all through my schooling days.
TAKE THIS;
Incase you're schooling and you're struggling with finances, the truth remains that, there are menial jobs you could do to help yourself. All you need to do is to cut down some engagements and squeeze yourself into a profitable thing.
Thank God for Platforms like this and others online opportunities, carve out time and engage in something profitable. I wish I knew blogging those days, it wood have been a smooth journey for me.
Thanks for reading 💝💝💝