"WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU GRADUATE?" By Nwosu Olisaemeka Evans Paschal

A wise man once said, “Only confused people beat about the bush”.

    Whenever this question is asked, conventional answers like; "I want to realize my ambitions", "I want to make my parents proud", "I don’t know yet". Some people even adopt the university motto and say they want to restore man’s dignity and so on. Have you ever sat down in a very quiet area with a pen and paper with this question in your mind?
         The questions should be, since I want to fulfill my ambitions; what are they?, since I want to make my parents proud; since I want to make first class; since I want chastity etc; how do I do it?.

The problem most students have is not that they are not intelligent or that they cannot be diligent, the thing is that they lack the drive for success, because you have to want it bad enough before you can get it. When you want something and want it bad, you focus, you determine, you persevere bearing in mind that failure is not an end, just an opportunity to do things better.

So, here lies the main question; The second one, how bad do you want to succeed? Do you want to get a first class so much that you don’t bother whether the class is boring but try to get a meaning from what is being taught, do you want first class so bad that when you get a result you go back scrutinize and buckle up to make “A”s next time, do you want success bad that irrespective of all the campus distractions and temptations you still want to be academically,diligent. Do you want chastity so much that even as though you are beautiful you don’t want to misuse your beauty in this sexually demoralized society of ours?

So do you really know what you want and how badly you want it? Is it chastity? Is it first class? Is it a close relationship with God? Is it something else? The next thing is to know and determine all the factors that can enable you achieve what you desire.
           What next? ACTION.

You cannot want to be in a close relationship with God when; you have friends that do not take ‘God’ matters seriously, when you still watch X-rated pictures, when you take part in vulgar discussions, when you have superhuman eyes that can see through every type of clothing even thick wool.

You cannot achieve true academic excellence while you still; continue with truancy, cannot just sit down and read or study, cannot concentrate in class. Sometimes these things appear as a puzzle because you want something but you have not really applied any effort towards the proper direction.

One thing is clear from experience; hard work pays, you might have read your textbook twice, taught many people, but you made little mistakes in the exam and made a lower grade than you would have expected. My chaplain, Rev. Fr. Ezema, once said ‘failure in exams only destroys your result not your destiny’. We seem to wonder in our times of trouble; if anyone sees or cares about what we are passing through, if anyone can help us, if anyone even understands.
       The truth is, there is one who sees and understands, one who also rewards hard work, one who watches-GOD.

We all have our different destinies and lives to live, do not compare yourself to others because you are different, you are special, you are unique.

Just keep this in mind in everything you are doing, define your success, determine how bad you want it, DO IT, because dreams that are not acted upon can never really be actualized. Work hard and pray hard to achieve success. It is not a new saying that when you work, you need to work as if everything depends on you, and when you pray you need to pray as if everything depends on God.

I will end with this anecdote from Brad Meltzer
     “If you want your story to be written in the pages of history, you dream, you work hard, and when you succeed stay humble, because the world needs fewer loud mouths.”

NWOSU OLISAEMEKA EVANS PASCAL