A female university student stepping out of a dorm. Photo by Keira Burton for Pexels.
I lied to a junior student once when we ran into each other at the market. She told me she had just returned from university for the holidays. Then she asked about me. I told her I was already at 200 Level. I was not. I had not even gained admission into a university yet. I was standing there in that market, three years after finishing secondary school, still at home, still waiting, still trying to understand how my life had managed to pause so completely while everyone else kept moving.
I lied because of the way she asked. She sounded like someone who believed I should have been in school, or even about to finish, due to the gap years between us.
The Years Nobody Counted
When people talk about gap years, they usually mean something they chose. They choose to travel, volunteer, find themselves and a plan for what comes next. Mine was nothing like that.
The three years I spent at home after secondary school were due to financial and family circumstances I couldn’t control. My mates were in lecture halls, stressing over assignments and taking tests. I was at home, watching a version of my life I had planned for myself disappear month by month.
The feeling that stayed with me the longest was shame. I had given myself a timeline. By a certain age, I would be in school. By another, I would be done. None of it worked out that way. According to the plan I made for myself, I should have graduated from university last year. I am still a student.
The other feeling was anger. I was angry at the distance between where I was and where I had expected to be; angry at the way life seemed so straightforward for everyone around me while I stayed in the same place. There were days I wished I had not been born. I said that plainly because it is true. That is where shame and frustration eventually take you.
What I Did With The Time
However, at some point, something shifted in me. I could not control when university would happen, but I could control what I did while I waited. I volunteered to teach English to nursery school pupils for a year. I found a free TEFL course online, enrolled and finished it. I started learning Korean on Coursera because I was curious, and because learning something, anything, felt like evidence that I was still moving even when my circumstances said otherwise. I wrote fictional stories for online platforms. I applied for scholarship after scholarship, most of which rejected me. A few accepted me but could not offer full funding.
Then I found content writing through an online course. That one discovery changed the direction of everything. The skills I was building during those years – how to research, how to write clearly, how to figure things out without anyone guiding me – became the exact foundation I now stand on. I have been published twice in TheCable Nigeria. I have certifications. I have a portfolio and a writing career that is still growing but is genuinely growing. None of it exists without those three years I spent convinced I was falling behind. I am now a Political Science and International Relations student at the University of Abuja.
Life does not move according to your plan. I do not mean that as a motivational quote. I mean I lived inside that truth for three years, and it took everything I had to not let it break me. But here is what I know now: every year is a chance to give yourself another chance. That is harder to believe than it sounds. It took me years of frustration to actually feel it, not just say it.
Skills are also the most portable thing you can build. Circumstances shift. Timelines fall apart. The opportunities that come rarely look like the ones you planned for. But what you know, what you have practised, what you refused to stop building, that goes everywhere with you. I am not where I expected to be at this age. But I am somewhere I built myself, out of years I once thought were wasted. The detour was the education.
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Fatima Zahra Yahaya is a Political Science and International Relations student at the University of Abuja and a freelance content writer.
The post Fatima Zahra Yahaya: How Gaining Admission to University Late Was the Best Thing for My Education appeared first on BellaNaija – Showcasing Africa to the world. Read today!.
By Fatima Zahra Yahaya
The post Fatima Zahra Yahaya: How Gaining Admission to University Late Was the Best Thing for My Education appeared first on BellaNaija – Showcasing Africa to the world. Read today!. Read More
