Every week, Inside OAU Media aims to learn about the lives of regular OAU students. OgbaFemi is full of mystery and all types of creatures! Forget the fine structures and the outside glory; this school isn’t for the weak. In here, it is a jungle, and you must do everything to survive academically, financially, and psychologically.
Graduating with distinction is one of the prestige of going to the university. Unlike before, nowadays students just want to graduate, some even go as far as saying school is scam, because they believe that no matter the degree you have in the university judging from the economy there will always be unemployment regardless.
These were the same words of a student of the prestigious Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Yinka, an unbothered student who lived on 1.24 CGPA. Although Yinka was a relaxed dullard (olodo) but there was one thing he was good at, cyber security. I was dumbfounded when I got to know that someone who was an ace in cyber security still couldn’t meet up requirements of his education. “This maths isn’t adding up” I said to myself. I was curious to the extent that I needed to hear his story for him.
Shortly after hearing about Yinka, I heard of a 2-day tech event holding on campus. The tech event was holding at Oduduwa Hall that day so i presumed I was going to meet him there. On getting there I saw a man that looked just exactly like the picture I saw online, ‘ahh I finally found him’ I thought ..I was excited that I could get to meet with this guru, no!, to be detailed a tech guru.
As someone who isn’t a tech enthusiast, I made sure I went for the program 2 hours after the time stated on the flyer. On getting there I couldn’t wait for the program to end, after 2 hours the program finally ended. As I approached Yinka at the parking lot I saw him moving towards a parked Mercedes Benz and I concluded immediately that the car was his. I was literally knocked out when I saw the 200 lvl student with his car, I mean I’m a 400 lvl student with 4.1 CGPA I said to myself.
I wanted to approach Yinka to ask directly about what was bothering me but that would be dumb, right? I cleared my head and approached him with a smiley face to give him kudos for a job well done, at least even if I was bored to death I learned that there were several online jobs I could do as a student disregarding the course I was studying in school.
We talked for about 3 minutes when I decided to ask him what I wanted to ask him. I thought it was rude to ask but I wanted to clear my curiosity. He replied with the exact words I said earlier school na scam oh, wetin we dem dey teach us no go feed us, na just waste of time jare.
I wasn’t expecting less actually but now I know all I heard of him aren’t rumors. He even said he knows he’s the talk of the town and that it was his best friend who knew of his results was the one who spilled the bean out of jealousy and that he wasn’t bothered cuz in his words he said he’s just here to graduate if not in flying colours then in crawling colours, after which we both laughed.
I even got to know that he started learning cyber security at the age of 9 and that he had to withdraw from school at age 12 because he couldn’t keep up with class in his junior secondary school.
We discussed for about 30 minutes non-stop about his life, career, and even tech. As I got home I said to myself again ‘Tech! So I can discuss that with someone without getting bored, what God can not do does not exist indeed’.
Then I thought again can someone be this dumb to the extent of withdrawing in his junior education? studying a random course in Art, and still be a tech guru? On the other hand, I thought about myself, I was with a 4.1 graduating soon and I didn’t even have any job nor skill except the virtual shop I had on WhatsApp where I sold male wears.
I had never been more worried in my entire life, silly me! I thought a job was waiting for me after graduating, after my encounter with Yinka I made the decision to learn a tech skill be it coding, DevOps, flutter anything!.
Are you like Yinka?, Do you prefer brilliance to financial freedom? Share your thoughts in the comment section below…
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We previously published the following stories on OAU Students Life
PS – For anonymity , the name , level and other personal details have been changed
