The Beginning of a Journey

It was Friday January 28 2023, I was sitting in my home study and wondering why I was not excited. The last 5 minutes was spent setting up my laptop and making sure I had a good connection and it was now 13 minutes to the commencement of our first session. I was always excited on the first day of school but this was different, I found myself still battling with the decision to commit two years of my life to study; could I really push myself the distance.

Studying for the admission exams had been a truly humbling experience. Haven studied Mechanical Engineering at University, mathematics and quantitative reasoning has always been my strength, Algebra, Trigonometry, Statistics were second nature. But I found myself struggling to appreciate the full import of “Pythagoras Theorem” and to instinctively solve word problems in statistics and it scared me. I had to learn them again and it was a slow process as I could hardly study for an hour without fatigue. I had become a different person; you lose what you don’t use. This made me determined to pass the exam and do the course if only to exercise my mind and stay sharp. Thankfully, I put in the work and got admitted.

My first session was Data Analytics. It was one of the courses I was curious about, wondered how contemporary it would be. My Bachelors of Engineering Project was on statistical modeling so I was also curious to know how much of it I still remembered.

I hadn’t given much thought to the fact that I would be meeting my course mates for the first time before now. I now looked forward to meeting new friends and building new relationships. They would be a big part of the experience and I hoped to meet people that would inspire me in school and in life. The first few weeks were online classes, following the pandemic online trainings and meetings had become quite normal but I wandered how that may affect the class dynamics; how would LBS enforce their strict etiquette?

I had written a list of objectives for choosing to pursue an MBA in Lagos Business School. I glanced at all 5 points; I want to become an excellent business leader, improve my capacity for strategic analysis, improve my decision making, become a more effective communicator and gain a deeper appreciation of the ethical responsibility of business. I added “expand my network”.

The moment had now come, the class commenced on time, there were 43 bright smiling faces in the gallery and the confident voice of the facilitator. I am a student again! I felt that hunger, that humility I thought I had lost. I hung on to every word and felt energized, I wanted to make a good impression. I know it is a process and some days would be more difficult than others but I am excited by the challenge and I plan to take you along for the ride.

Ayuba Loko