As an adult you are solely responsible for your life - Every other person's input is a privilege

I read those lines again with tears in my eyes. You have been offered provincial admission into the University, to study Theatre and Film studies….

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I bent my head and allowed the tears to come, the way they ran down my eyes in torrents took me by surprise. I didn't know exactly why I was crying profusely; if I was crying from joy that my dream had come true, or if I was crying because I wasn't ready at all for the financial responsibilities that came with being a student.

The rest of my family also received the news with mixed feelings. It seemed like my mother was the happiest.

“God that has given you admission will surely take care of you in school. Don't be worried about it” she said to me, I smiled in appreciation but I wasn't feeling motivated. If there was any time I had been scared, it was that time.

I put a lot of effort into gaining that admission. To begin with, my father was not in support of the fact that I applied to study Theatre Arts and so had made an open declaration to not be a part of my entire school process, financially and otherwise.

I didn't take that particular declaration trivially because I knew who my father was and what he could do.

My siblings had asked me then not to worry about him,

“We're going to support you in every way we can,” they said to me and I was quite relieved. But two weeks to when I was finally to pack up and leave for school, my sister called my mother and said that her husband was laid off from work. It wouldn't affect them so much as they had just gotten married but that meant that financial support could not come from them in the meantime.

My mother kept her hopes up.

“Don't worry, two weeks is still a long time from now. God will definitely work something out in your favor”

But it seemed God wasn't aware that I had gotten admission and needed finances to sponsor me because, after two weeks, I just had N10,000 in my account for my transport down to the state where my school was located.

At this time, my mother had become frantic and began to look for items she could sell to raise some money for me. I was okay with it but when we sat down to do the math, we discovered I would be needing about a hundred thousand naira to get comfortable in a state I had been to just once in my entire life.

It was then my mom and I began to really panic.

When I called my older brother and broke into tears in the process of speaking with him, he chided me. That was the best thing that happened to me in that period.

“You already got the admission,” he began, “There's no need to cry because there is no money to go to school yet. For now, get creative and think of what to do to make some money. You can even resume two months after your admission, they won't take it away from you” he said.

I thought about what he said and decided to meet with some well-to-do women at the church I attended, telling them that I could come and clean their house for a little pay. Three of them were excited about it while the rest said they had help already.

“What if they accuse you of stealing?” My mother, who was vehemently against the idea, asked. She said no child of hers would become a maid. I had to start cleaning for them without her knowledge for about two weeks before opening up to tell her I had started the jobs. By then, it was too late for her to ask me to stop.

When I was able to raise my acceptance fee, which was a month after I got my admission letter, I went to school. My older brother had already promised to send my school fees from his salary at the end of the month.

After that phase of my life, it was easier for me to navigate financial challenges. I stopped worrying about not having money and instead worked hard to ensure that I was not totally relying on people to provide for me.

I learned the hard way that as an adult, I was solely responsible for my life and every other person's input was a privilege.

I also learned to work with my hands and my brain, never allowing an opportunity to pass me by because I felt I was too big to do a particular job. So long as it brought me decent money, I was in.