Empty your cup to get it refilled – A plain advice to all NSP

It all started when I got admission to the university and had to attend my first lecture.

It was one bright Thursday morning and I dressed up with all my stationery fully loaded in my school bag.

Typical of every first year student, we were all seated in the lecture hall an hour before the lecturer came in.

There entered a bald short man with a stunning look on his face; maybe it was a way of welcoming students into a different setting like the university.

The first few things he did were to greet us, introduce himself, his Teaching Assistant and the course he was going to lecture.

Next, he asked a colleague to wipe the board which had some gibberish writings on it, then he said;‘these are your respective knowledge from your various Senior High Schools’.

A lot of us did not understand that ritual very well. I think some do not understand still.

Actually, I only got to understand that ritual when I was posted to do my National Service with a company.

I realized aside from everything I have learnt in school, the corporate world had different dictates, thereby; making all the knowledge acquired previously ‘gibberish’.

Although, “I knew my thing”. Abi you know what I mean.

Considering myself as a university graduate was enough to hold shoulder high and make those whom I went to meet know that, chaley, me too I dey.

Dear National Service Personnel, if you have such ideas running through your mind, I am sorry; you are treading a slippery path.

You should know that there are clear-cut distinctions between that “first class academic” excellence and the “Low grade work experience”.

The irony is that the latter,which in most cases,looked down upon, is very expensive and can only be achieved not on a silver platter.

You may be the best student from your institution but you cannot match head to head with even the cleaner of an establishment.At least, that uneducated cleaner has a lot on-job experience than you, who is from academia with no employability skills.

I am in no means saying that academic qualifications are useless. They aren’t useless; they are very vital and essential quality that needs to be achieved by any one possible.

My argument lies in the fact that, whether the best or otherwise, you need to empty your cup of pride and settle for the last, if not the least, in a way to get the cup refilled with on-job experience.

It is a National Service so you would ultimately be required to add on to what is being done, but you can’t give what you don’t have.

And if I tell you that you can’t give what you don’t have; trust me; you don’t have what it takes to be in the corporate world. I have been there before.

I have this simple thing to tell you: take advantage of your new setting, turn it to a different learning ground and explore new areas.

As Isaac Newton has it “if I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”

This metaphor of a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant expresses the meaning of discovering truth by building on previous discoveries.

Don’t be ‘too known’ to learn new things. Be calm and you will be too knowing through learning.

After all, we only need a bowl of Fufu and energy drink as my colleague, King Midas, will say.

Till next time, this is from my mind’s mind.