How did I get here?
I began the year with a lot of positive energy, most of which I channeled into scoring the goals I had set. One of them was to pick up a book each quarter of the year and finish it. On my list, it was something like “7. Read at least four books this year”. Luckily for me I found the right first-book on a blue and white colored timeline — a tweet from one of my favourite following @mashstartup. It’s titled “Zero to One” by Peter Thiel. Throughout the course of reading this book I have developed a habit of thinking critically and asking simple questions that spur reflective answers. — And then I thought, maybe I should write about these things so they don’t get lost in the memory maze. So on today’s episode of a potential series, I asked myself, “How did I get here?”
“You are not a lottery ticket”, Peter frequently said in bold letters.
After reflecting on this statement, I placed the words “Luck” and “Plan” side-by-side to ascertain which it was that got me here. Let’s find out together.
Taking a stroll down memory lane back to my university days when I was in my 3rd year in the University of Lagos. I remember tackling a trivial problem on matrices applying the Laplace decomposition method and suddenly I totally zoned out as I often do these days. I fell into a trance trying to figure out how this solution I had gotten to this mathematical problem will cure my broke student bank at the time. I thought that maybe being this smart, I could become an academic and lecture other upcoming mathematicians and get paid for it but I quickly snapped out of it because I believe that isn’t my calling. So I dabbled in other reasonings.
Questions like “what do you love?”, “What are you passionate about?”, recurred in my mind and I started detaching myself from all the seriousness to ‘solve for X’ and began glueing myself to a more real-life perspective to ‘find my WHY’.
I love to solve ‘people’ problems. I have a passion for creating value through critical thinking. I quickly started making decisions to learn to write code beyond, ‘print(“Hello, World!”);’ and thought it was cool to learn how to code what I design, so I started then with Visual Basic 06 programming language. I chose this programming language for two reasons; I liked the word Visual because it meant I was going to do some design and the fact it was Basic made me feel like I’ll quickly pick it up. — Grassroots learning I thought to myself. Afterwards I moved to web design, coding in Html, Css and JavaScript languages using frameworks like bootstrap. This was an exciting period for me because I was finally doing something new, solving my problem by learning to solve even bigger problems using design as my tool. The plan was to get myself involved in as many projects as possible before I answered the clarion call (NYSC) and soon after my final exams I had completed projects that solved real problems on web design & development, adding to my software skills of using Adobe Creative Cloud applications. It was then time to begin the job hunt, I clearly had no intentions to stay idle in the coming year so I signed up for every reasonable job searching platform I found online. I still receive emails from them till date with subjects like, “Top job picks for you this week”.
The clarion call came in a few weeks after and I had to ‘pick up’. Although I had not found the ideal role I was searching for, I was shooting shots at any thing close to an entry level designer essentially for brand and digital products. I was to spend 3 weeks in Zamfara state, Nigeria — for NYSC camping only, there was no way I was going to spend the whole year there, not when election was looming. So while in my second week in Tsafe orientation camp of everyday drill and crazy hot sun — the ‘corper wee’ lifestyle, I spent my nights in my one corner bunk updating my CV and sending applications using my almost-flat-battery-life phone (the struggle amidst the hustle). Thanks to Chima who helped with proofreading for grammatical errors. Before camp was over, those shots were finally yielding results and I was getting invites to attend interviews. It felt awesome!
Oh wait! I didn’t tell you I was in the news? Hehe, let me gist you. So a month before I went to camp, I applied for a design competition (Corporate Communications Pitch Competition, CCPC 2018). It’s for designers and PR strategists. After my first challenge submission, I was selected for the final pitch. It was a really intense and challenging 1-week working on my final pitch but I came through and showed up, pitched my design and made my mark. After the judges had done their thing, I emerged as the winner of the design challenge. It was a beautiful moment to behold. It was published on Newspapers and blogs. I felt small shoulder padding, lol.
Cool right? 😉
So while I was still shooting shots and stretching my luck, Ebuka called me and told me Interswitch was recruiting, corpers precisely. My ears perked up like a dog. My palms itched like it was the last game on a sports bet ticket. With all enthusiasm, I applied. It was for the role of a service desk representative — I was going to be taking calls from people, helping them solve their technical issues. Not exactly what I wanted but I thought to myself, “it’s Interswitch o, if you get this job, it’s fine. You’ll still be solving problems.” Self-whining is the worst kind of whining sha, but it helped push me to try. I went in for my interview, my thoughts didn’t change, it only affirmed how badly I needed to work in this organisation. My interviewer picked up my CV, it looked like she read it twice ‘sef’ and was caught aback. She asked, “What are you doing here?”, I said, “I’m here for the interview”, and She said, “you can’t work for me”. “Jisos!, I exclaimed in my mind”. Hearing those words felt like my heart sank in my stomach.
Then she followed up saying,
“I’ll forward your CV to a department where you belong, hopefully they have a place for you”.
That’s it, my interview was over. Everything I had rehearsed and the information I had crammed from their website didn’t get to reach the ears of my interviewer. I was tensed and felt unlucky. I went home and didn’t know how to answer the question, “how did it go?”. Trust me everyone asked. But few days after, I got a mail inviting me for another interview, this time for the role of a product designer/front-end specialist. I didn’t see that coming. My head felt heavier than my body, I didn’t know if I was a good fit for this role. On the bright side, I was in awe that she did just like she said she would. God bless you Sikemi!
The time came and I went in for my interview for a role I wasn’t sure I was a good fit for and now I’m here, happy I got the job; exploring the fields of brand and product design, working with a super team in the Creative and Digital services unit, Interswitch. I’m at the core of design in the entire design process for a product, a campaign or internal communications for Interswitch West Africa & East Africa.
My question now is,
What really got me here? Was it all planned by me unintentionally or was I just lucky?
“I can expect the future to take a definite form or I can treat it as hazily uncertain. If I treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in advance and to work to shape it. But if I expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness and chance, I’ll give up on trying to master it.”
- Peter Thiel
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