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SOMETHING LIGHT
What Was Her Experience? Kept Losing. Never Gave Up
Ms. Start Over: I always had a strong conviction that I was going to be successful. When I was young, I had this vision of myself growing up to become the CEO of a big multinational. I had always done well in school so failure was not something I was particularly familiar with. I think my
luck started to change in my final year of university. When our final results came out, it showed I had a ‘carry over’... I had failed a course and needed to take that course again before I could graduate. I was in shock because it meant I was going to be delayed for a whole year. I did everything I could to waive the course
but when I realized the impact that would have on my GPA, I decided to just move forward with the extra
year.
That year, it was difficult to see my
friends graduate and move on to their service year, while I sat at home. The ironic part was that I had never failed any exam in my life before. So, falling for the first time right at the end of my university experience was a very difficult pill for me to swallow. After a
month of staying home and battling depression watching my friends
graduate and leave me behind, I decided not to take life lying
down. Instead of just staying home being idle, I decided to
use the free time to enrol in a number of courses that
would help improve my skills as a Marketing undergraduate. Eventually, I finally graduated with a
good GPA and certification in a new skill. I was not happy
about the extra year, but it didn’t feel as bad anymore. The
year did not go to waste. After my service year, and after
about three months of job-hunting at home, I finally landed my dream job in
an FMCG, one of the top multinational subsidiaries in Lagos. I was excited to
start my career as a Marketing Trainee. Five years down the line, my life was blooming. I had a dream job that paid me very well, a car and my own apartment. Life was good. Life was really good. I had just gotten my third promotion from an Officer Level to a Senior Officer Level and I was appointed as the Team Lead of my unit. Everything was going according to plan and then it happened. The mail from HR saying the company was going to be taking some ‘drastic measures to cut costs’. They were going to be down-sizing. Again, I was in a state of utter shock when the dreaded list came out and I had been affected.
I remember the silence in my head as the office went into chaos around me with people realizing they had just lost their means of livelihood. I got home that night realizing that I had nowhere to go the next day, so I just sat in silence in my poorly, lit living room. A single question ran through my mind
“What next?”. Three months passed and I still hadn’t found a job. The situation had become critical. I was down to my last few thousands in savings and my rent was going to be due in a couple of months. When I finally got an offer from a boutique Marketing Agency, the salary was not even
up to a quarter of what I was earning before, but it was a job and I needed the money. So, I took it.
I worked at the boutique agency for a little over a year. Working there opened my eyes to the fact that I had what it took to actually run an agency on
my own. After sometime,
PAGE 6 INSIDE ACCESS | JULY 2020 5TH EDITION