2018 Career Hit or Miss?
Sometime last week, a virtual friend of mine asked me how my career had been in 2018. A simple answer to the question what did you do in 2018? A simple question one would say, but there was nothing simple about the question, especially when it had to do with my career.
He didn’t mean to confuse me or make me uncomfortable with the question . To him, he was getting to know my career life and what I had achieved. But that question astounded me and caused a whirlwind of emotions, attacking my very fragile self.
What was I supposed to tell him? A recap of my national service? Or how I had been unlucky with jobs.
I didn’t have a concrete answer for him then, so I gave the customary “good” we all are used to. However after careful thinking and reminiscing, I do have answers for the young man and I hope he reads this and understands why I nonchalantly passed the question considering the fact that I was always “busy” working.
I hope you too read this and draw some lessons from it.
The best way I can answer the question is breaking it down to the simplest question After National service what happened to you?
Few years back when I was writing Literature in the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Exams, I was so confident I would score nothing lesser than an A. so confident was I that I did not even study the night before. Not that i did it deliberately, I had taught my seniors that night. Stood on my feet and analyzed all the 6 poems back to back with them for more that 3 times. By the time I was done with teaching my seniors and my classmates, I was exhausted. So I went straight to bed.
Guess what life did to me; I had a C6 in literature, literature of all subjects. The fact that I did not clock all As did not bother me as much as not clocking an A in literature.
The feeling I felt when I was walking into the examination hall of my favorite subject, literature, is the same feeling I felt finishing service but in moderate doses.
I knew I would survive this life no matter how harsh. But what I did not predict was that I would be denied a job offer because I did not clock the years of experience and that later in the year I would be fired from my other job because I opted to go for my coding classes instead of attending a massage session organized by my boss.
Even if I had the foresight of a Jewish prophet, I would never have seen it coming.
Right after service, I struggled to find my foot in the corporate world. So after my experience with my last job application, I decided to acquire extra skills that will either make me more marketable in the job market or open a world of unlimited possibilities.
I would not say I was unlucky with jobs, because I had so much contract jobs that put food on my table, paid my bills and rent. But I was focused on getting an 8–5 job that I lost sight of my abilities and capabilities, lost sight of all the opportunities the world had to offer only if I stopped looking in one angle and adjusted my lens to an angle which allowed me to see wide.
After carefully sifting through all the things I could do and observing trends and evolutions, I arrived at the conclusion that technology was the way to go. I decided that if the world was evolving in the communication industry, which really is the foundation of technology, I had to evolve with it.
Right on cue, Ispace; a technology hub in Ghana opened applications for the 2018/2019 cohort of their Unlocking Women and Technology program, that they run each year. I readily applied for web development and got accepted.
While this was going on, I was approached by an organization I volunteered for earlier in the year to do events for them. I reluctantly accepted the offer to work with them again in 2019. Reluctantly because I was aware of the organizational structures, which was nothing to write home about, also because there were some issues that were not handled properly in my opinion. I did not approve of the leadership style either but I accepted anyways.
If I knew how it would all end, I would not have accepted that offer.
Shortly after accepting this offer, the founder requested to meet with me, which I obliged after so many back and forth with time. I met with her in her home; we had an extensive and fruitful discussion. At the end of the meeting, she offered me the position of project manager, I was to foresee all the event in the festival and most importantly fix the already for lack of a better word “crumbling” structures.
I am a very strong willed person, filled with lots of energy and a sense of commitment, which I think she saw and thought will work for her. To say I was thrilled was an understatement, I needed the money and so I was ready to jump to the offer but the more logical side of me spoke and I asked her for time to think about it. Three days to be specific, the meeting was on a Tuesday and I requested till Friday to give my answer.
I did think about it and even went back to ask her some few questions to guide me in arriving at an answer. Long story short, I politely declined but offered to still organize some events for her.
Her reply was very polite, if you follow my meaning, from the other side of the phone I could feel the negative energy from her side but I let it slide again. Maybe the universe offered me an opportunity to backtrack on my offer to still be involved in the organization I but I did not pay heed to my intuition.
A day after that, her daughter approached me to check if I would be available to come by their home for a massage session her mum was organizing for the team. I again politely declined because I had coding classes to attend and at that point, the massage wasn’t a priority.
The night before the day of the massage, I received a message from her daughter, telling me her mum said it was compulsory that I turned up, I asked her if she explained to her mum the circumstances in which I was unable to make it, she responded in the affirmative but her mum disregarded it.
I again saw a message in the our group page from her mum, a very crude message saying that it was compulsory for us to turn up.
I did not turn up for the massage; instead I went to class to study.
At around 10 pm that very day, exactly 5 days after I declined her offer, I was removed from the group page.
Removed. Detached. Disconnected. Deleted.
No prior knowledge, no explanation. Just removed.
Impersonal, No trace of amicability, like waiting for a moment and it just presents itself. No hesitation, No explanation. No consideration. Not even a thought. A thought to think. Just removed.
I reached out to her to enquire her reasons for deleting me. She wrote a long patronizing spiel about how I didn’t turn up for the supposed meeting coined into a massage, which speaks to the level of commitment I had for her organization. She added that she needs more than what I have to offer, she needs commitment which I clearly did not have.
What was my sin? I declined luxury for the quest for knowledge.
I was hurt, confused and above all sad. Hurt in the way and manner I was dismissed, confused of the situation and sad for the future of that organization that has so much potential to grow yet will be crippled because of leadership.
This is a summary of the answer to my virtual friend’s question of how my career faired in 2018.
He did not ask me for future plans or what my career will be like in 2019 so I would not volunteer answers to an unasked question.
Is it long and dramatic? Next time don’t ask a storyteller about incidences in her life.
