Post-graduation pressure. Son of God.
A Nigerian law student is asked whether he feels pressure to have his life figured out after graduation. He says no, then reconsiders in real time and names exactly where the pressure actually comes from.
His first answer is confident: “I don’t think I will feel any kind of pressure, because I have all my sense about me here from school. So I have my life figured out after school.”
Pressed on whether society applies it anyway, he revises. “The pressure is quite real, because we’ve seen people graduate from school and you see them going back to their parents. And considering the fact that I’m a man, so there’s more pressure to step up and be the man, be the breadwinner for the family. That’s the only pressure. The fact that I’m being a man, and that’s quite gender-based.”
His answer to it is a plan rather than a feeling. “The goal is to plan, and plan right. It starts from making sure that you excel academically, so it gives rise to opportunities of actually landing a job immediately after school, so you won’t be stranded.”
Asked what he tells people who want to know what he will do with a law degree, he does not hedge: “I want to do academics with law. I’m looking forward to being a professor of law.”
And on the classmates whose futures are already arranged: “That can be quite overwhelming, especially if you find yourself in the circle of people who are big wigs.”
Interviewed by Gift Angel for a weekly We Them Media and poidh bounty.