WHAT DOES QUITTING LOOKS LIKE?
You are finally in your last year in secondary school. It’s time to pick your choice of course and you decided to go with Medicine. You are a conventionally intelligent student, so this isn’t much of a risk. Your teachers doubted the possibility of gaining admission, but the fire lit by passion and ambition is burning in you so you don’t mind. You finally sat for your UTME exam and ended up with a 297. So close, but not a good enough mark to get the course you desire. Then the waiting game starts, you applied after realizing you narrowly passed the cut-off mark. You hoped and prayed to get the admission. The weeks between the application and the release of admission list were torturous to you. Finally, it was out; your name isn’t there. There was nothing to do but to wait till another year which you’re more than willing to do. You put all your efforts into it. Can’t fail this time. But sadly, you did. And that was when they hit you with the lines; “Be realistic, you are just not good enough.” “You can’t gain admission for that course without connection.” “Your mates are already in their 2nd year and you’re still looking around for a course you can’t get. Better stop wasting your time.”
Then your mind started changing, the fire starts to flicker. You start thinking to yourself; “Maybe I was too ambitious.” “I am just too idealistic.” “Even if I got the course, how will I cope with the pressure?” You decided to lower your standards. It’s time to face reality and not keep chasing something that is doomed to always slip out of your hands. Are you developing a realistic approach to life? Or are you simply quitting?
Whenever I think of quitting, it’s usually this picture in my head that I will wake up one day and simply decide to stop. “I QUIT!”. That there will be this definite moment you’ll be able to point to and say; “That was the moment I gave up”. And sometimes, it is true. But most times, when things start to go differently from your plans. When it is becoming harder to go after your dreams with the same conviction you had in day 1, you start to compromise. You start telling yourself stories and reasons why you should maybe delay or at least change your direction.
Quitting doesn’t always look like quitting. Some time, it looks like; “I can’t gain admission to study medicine, but pharmacy is close enough.”