The journey of a thousand miles, they say, begins with a step. And mine wasn’t any different.
You know, sometime in 2013, I wrote my first Jamb to attend FUNAAB to study Agriculture, but my father wasn’t aboard. Later that same year, he suggested I enrolled at LAUTECH for a one-year pre-degree program because of its proximity to where I reside, Oyo town, and mostly because of his figurative trust in my ability to study Medicine and Surgery; like every other parent, he hoped for the best, for me.
Well, his suggestion had a good outlook, so I obtained the pre-degree form, wrote the entrance examination, and passed with a percentage of 73. I was offered provisional admission for the pre-degree program, that same year.
The program didn’t start until 2014 due to a strike action that outlasted its luck, which made the year uneventful. However, owing to misinformation, I had to change my course of study to Nursing sciences and was offered admission into the Department of Nursing in 2014.
Somewhere along the way, life happened. Sadly, life didn’t promise us fairness always, sometimes, it sprinkles a bit of war on our part. On having a great penchant for ‘night classes’, I was on the way to my hostel from one of those nights when I got a phone call from my father who directed me to come home to sign some paperwork; being his next of kin. I took the next available transport home, only to discover that the inevitable had happened; my mother had died the night before. This happened right before the 100L first semester’s exam. I returned to school a few days later feeling cheated, unenthused–courtesy of the blows life dealt me with. Also, I became emotionally distant from friends and random people and significantly, several fun activities lost their appeal to me. On nights that I succeeded in making it to tonight’s class to study, I simply tossed the books aside and got drenched in tears. Even though this incidence made me lose certain relationships, I still had supporting friends at the time who assisted me in getting beyond the incident, and that was essentially how I went on.
Ruqayyah Adelakin Graduated With A First Class, Recount How She Almost Got Distracted at LAUTECH
We took the semester examinations and received the results afterward. Anyways, I felt like I didn’t get off to a good start; with a GP of 4.78 of 5.0. We finished the 100L syllabus and proceeded to the sophomore’s, where the actual strain of work began.
I heard lots of dreadful and discouraging statements like, “there’s no amount of reading you do, it’s impossible to graduate with distinction in LAUTECH Nursing.”, “Don’t overwork yourself, the best you can graduate with is Second class, Upper division”, “there’s no way you can maintain a first-class CGPA, it dips during the clinical years at Osogbo” since no one had ever graduated with honors from the Department of Nursing, currently a Faculty of Nursing Science. Rather than being deterred from attaining my goals, these rather discouraging facts became a springboard that always nudged me forward. Interestingly, neither the prize nor the perks that came with it mattered to me; all I aimed for was to graduate with a distinction, which will re-write the narrative and also set a pace for the succeeding set(s), that a distinction was possible, however. With these goals, I became very confident in my resolve.
We were at one of our external clinical postings, the NeuroPsychiatry Hospital Abeokuta, Ogun State, precisely, when I received a message from the dean of student affairs inviting me to a meeting at Ogbomoso. There, a caretaker committee was formed, which comprised of the best students from all the faculties in LAUTECH. I emerged the best from my faculty. And this too, became a stepping stone for me because I was able to occupy a leadership position in the LAUTECH Students’ Union Executive Caretaker Committee as the Vice Chairman from 2019 to 2021.
“Uneasy lies the head that wear the crown”, couldn’t be any truer as combing through academics and politics wasn’t an easy task. From preparing for practice examinations and writing a series of professional examinations (RN, RM, RPHN), days that I lacked sleep, to rigorous reading were extremely stressful. To break the camel’s back, the dreadful stories of CGPA dipping turned out true; my CGPA dropped to 4.49 at 400Level.
In my college final year, the bedeviled rift between LAUTECH owner states, Osun and Oyo states was settled, and we were requested to return to Ogbomoso. It took the grace of God and persistent hard work to improve my CGPA to 4.51 and 4.52 at 500Level first and second semesters, respectively.
My heart leaped with joy the day our faculty dean announced to me that I was the best graduating student of my set and a “5-star” graduand. Eureka!! I had graduated with honors. It was indeed one of my best days.
If this feat isn’t my best lifetime achievement yet, then what is? And yes yes, there are more laurels to cling to, so there is no stopping, till this peak becomes the least.
I am currently seeking scholarship.
Odetola Nafisat Olajumoke
Overall Best student
Faculty of Nursing Class ’19
CGPA :4.52.
