FIRST-CLASS STUDENTS AND ASPIRING FIRST-CLASS STUDENTS, LISTEN!

The worst thing you can let happen to you is to allow people to make you feel less about what you have. Never let them.

What is worse than having nothing is having almost everything and thinking (by design or ignorance) that it is nothing.

Don’t fall into that trap. There is a set of first-class attitudes that made you a First-Class student. Always pay attention to that. The more you do, the more you realize the weight of all you’ve done. The message is always embedded in the process you went through.

I was in communication with a Best Graduating Student friend, and she was like she was in an interview, and when questions were thrown up, she found herself giving answers she considered “book smart” and not “street smart” enough. Textbook replies, yunno? Based on that, she needs to leave the booky side of her and learn the street.

Really? You mean that, as a top-performing student, you never had that (the capacities of situational awareness and pragmatic adjustment) in your arsenal?

Don’t you recall the moments when you knew that “Define Economics – 2 marks” was different from “Define Economics – 15 marks”?

Don’t you recall when you had to use a Taiwan case study instead of a US case study during your exams because that was your best chance of impressing our Development Economics professor who studied in Taiwan and won’t keep quiet about how Asia is the future of development?

Don’t you recall how you used “tractorization” in a sentence for the first time in your examination life because that’s the word that Dr. Ganiyat often used to paint a graphic picture of what Nigeria’s move to agricultural mechanization should be?

Your decisions in these moments that gave you that First-Class advantage weren’t just borne out of bookish intelligence alone. They were also borne out of moments of on-the-spot audience understanding, situational awareness, and pragmatic adjustments to give not just what’s right but what’s needed and required to earn your mark.

And so, no, you didn’t give bookish answers because of your First-Class academic persona. You gave that answer because you betrayed the essence and completeness that made the First-Class academic persona a First-Class persona.

(Trust me, she’s a friend and my delivery was a lot warmer, but the point stands.)

Oftentimes, we are made to flatten out the nuances of what we achieved because of the loud-voiced, inevitably low-resolution description of what we achieved by those that didn’t achieve it. They tell you what a First-Class means, and you buy it without sitting down to reflect on what your First-Class meant: the hurdles, decisions, actions, strategies, commitments, discernment, timely adjustments, and every other cherry that makes it more than just words on paper, that makes institutions fawn at the idea of us being part of their worlds.

Don’t get me started with the foolishness of “we don’t know how to deal with failure.” We did it by mostly swiftly adjusting and having ways to win. Not our fault, is it? 😂📌

Never let anyone (even the low-resolution version of you) make you feel less of what you’ve got. Pay attention to what you’ve got, and you’ll see that the process has a lot of messages for you. Now, integrate these messages, don’t separate. What you have is a lot. Congratulations!

PS: If you’ve got a First-Class, you can share your screenshot just because… 🧑🏽‍🦯

Your 5.0GPA Excellence Coach,
Jameswilliams Chiahukamnanya Gabriel.