WHY SCHOOL? (2)





Schooling for many people is to prepare them for a solid, safe financial future and this is where many get it wrong. While securing a future is a good thing, schooling is designed for a more holistic purpose. Has I had said in my previous post, wrong department or not, schooling helps build a total man (or woman). At best what your departmental choice will do for you is to bring you basic concepts and terminologies that will make training easier. So why school?

  1. EDUCATION FOR A FUTURE CAREER
While the general concept of schooling, particularly tertiary education is to upgrade the level of thought and ability to reason, schooling, in particular, tailors your suitability for specific career choices. While you ultimately decide what you want to do with your life, the kind of education you get particularly based on your course options will prepare you for a future career in that area.

I have emphasized before that while the techniques and methods for achieving results differ in the outside world or field, the school is to prepare you with basic concepts and terminologies to ensure you are able to integrate faster into the corporate setting with minimal training. Every company has a form of training, whether formal or informal for new staff and recruits. Usually, they want you to buy into the company culture and way of getting things done. They also teach you their own unique methods of delivering on targets. Your ability to flow with their way of doing things is largely predicated on the amount of training you have received in school.

The reason why most companies complain about unsuitable candidates for roles is because of the schooling objectives have not been tailored or updated to cover real-world realities. So many of them run graduate trainee programmes to enable them to train and then make their choice from the pack.

Your education will determine to an extent the kind of career you end up with.

  1. RELATIONSHIPS FOR A LIFETIME
One thing that keeps amazing me is the political class and how everybody seems to know everybody. They either went to the same primary school, secondary school, college or university. It is important to note that the sole aim of an alumni body is to be able to link new graduates with more experienced senior colleagues already in the field for mentorship and assistance in career choices, placement and growth.

The relationships you build during your school days will ultimately follow you for life. Many of the friends I have currently are from my school days. While I have lost contact with many of my secondary school mates (trust issues and the collapse of our WhatsApp group), the ones that remain are still not as close as the guys from the university.

I have known guys who got married from the same school, even though I did not subscribe to it early enough. Majority of the relationships you will take through life and possibly your career will be people you meet at this level of schooling and education. Who remembers their secondary school reunion party anymore (except you have blown…lol!). Many times the people you graduate with the help you through your starting steps into life. I have many instances of guys staying at their friend's family house because it is closer to work and managing till they both got a shared apartment (one person moved out because the other was getting married).

These relationships not just help you in life and career, but also in business. I can attest to the fact that the first 20 clients I had were my school mates. It was easy for them to trust me because they had interacted with me and could vouch for my abilities and competencies. I didn't have to draw up a powerpoint presentation or cull a long list of "jobs undertaken" to prove my worth to these people - they knew me!

Interestingly, these people end up in places where they are able to favour you and your business. One of my friends was the communications manager of a company I was intending to do some business with. Although I had to go through the process of becoming a vendor, it became much easier for me to navigate and complete the process, with a good fraction of the jobs coming my way.

Do not under estimate schooling, and try to maximise as much as possible relationships, manage them well so they can serve you in the future. I will still bring some more points in my next blog post.

Location: Akure, Nigeria

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