Life Lately: Tuition scholarships for five OAU final-year students; Show me Your Work

After much hemming and hawing and obsessing over minutiae, I am delighted to share www.etkolscholars.org with the world. While the site has been ready for months, I’ve had one reason (read excuse) or the other for postponing its launch. Between gentle reminders from Wale Osideinde and taking my own medicine (see Working on A Dream), we’re finally live!

It is most certainly a drop in the ocean, but there’s a real problem that needs addressing. Despite the subsidized and therefore relatively low tuition fees at Nigerian federal universities, many students struggle to pay tuition every year and some drop out or don't go at all because they can't afford it. There is abundant proof that education changes lives, and I believe all students who want a university education should be able to get one. But this is us starting “where we are and with what we have”.

Life Lately: The World as it is

I’m going to be 30 in two Saturdays. I’m very excited about this milestone and I’m looking forward to that week (yes – it’s an entire birthday week away from work). But what’s a milestone where Koye doesn’t reflect? So I’ve also been reading my old journals and thinking about my journey. I found this entry from 2009 about a simple but political decision I had to make, and thought it was a good example of how my thinking has evolved over the past decade.

In our third year as Mechanical Engineering undergrads at OAU, we needed to run practical exercises in a wind tunnel. A wind tunnel is a tube with air blowing inside that is used to observe the interaction between air and objects moving through air. For example you might use a wind tunnel to observe how a streamlined sports car cuts through the air more easily than a boxy truck. The lab at OAU used kerosene to add smoke to the air so we could see the interaction between the air and our scale models. We were all excited about the practical, but a small challenge had arisen. The lab expected us to buy the kerosene.

Life Lately: Working on a Dream

Hanging out with my guy, Shakespeare, on the grounds of the lovely Southwark Cathedral

I know someone who has been planning to apply to business school for just over six years now. These days, I smile and change the topic when our conversations turn to that dream. I have worked with them over the past few years to identify and address a series of blockers, and we’ve reached the conclusion that inertia is the ultimate blocker.

Chances are you too know someone who has dreamt of doing something for a while but has not gotten around to doing it. Maybe they want to start a business, adopt a healthy lifestyle, or volunteer at a non-profit. Heck, maybe you’re that someone. I too have many dreams I have not done anything about. I recently wrote in my journal that I could live a full life working on the dreams I already have without ever having another one.

Life Lately: Are you getting the learning you need?

Taking in the grandeur of the Cathedral of Barcelona

I was discussing this post (Life Lately: Learn & Be Curious from April 25) with someone recently, and they told me how they were struggling to make the time for learning. It got me thinking about yet another post I shared with my Conversations newsletter group but never posted to this blog. I've reproduced it below and edited it to bring it up to date.

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When last did you learn something new? It could have been a new Excel function or how to take better pictures. Think about it. Did you do any learning last week?

Life Lately: What does PIE have to do with Career Success?

Which of these counts the most towards career success?

Performance? Image? Exposure?

If you think it is performance, like I too once did, the research does not agree.

I focused on performance when I started my career, expecting my work to speak for itself. I paid little attention to how colleagues perceived me or how much visibility I was getting. I would deliver complex projects and just move on to the next one without making a fuss.

Life Lately: Self Assessments and How to Read More

Reading Decisive by the Heath brothers a few Saturdays ago at a nearby cafe

Happy new month people!

There are two quick thoughts in this week’s note.

**1**

I struggled to prioritize mindfulness in July. I felt that I had to make up for the gap that opened up when I was away from work in June, so I started skipping my morning meditations and diving straight in. I also went well over my budget, often excused with a muttered YOLO to myself. Lastly, I felt like I spent much of my time at work sorting out small housekeeping-type-stuff; you know – the type of stuff that keeps the business ticking along but is not necessarily transformational.

Why am I sharing this? To illustrate the practice I’ve had for a few years of asking myself “What worked? And what didn’t work?” at the end of every month. The answers to both questions help me double-down on the positives and address the opportunity areas before too much time passes.

Life Lately: Thanksgiving

2006, 2012

The most afraid I have been in my life is the two incidents when there was a real chance I could lose either of my parents. And that one time I was halfway through a daredevil roller coaster ride and promising Jesus I would never try it again if the ride ended without drama.

It’s my dad’s thanksgiving service in Ibadan today. While I can’t be there, it’s all I have thought about through the weekend. So I figured I’d do some thanksgiving of my own in today’s entry.

Life Lately: Freedom Day and my roadmap for living with COVID-19

Enjoying the sun and glad to be free of my second self-isolation in seven months

Tomorrow is Freedom Day in England. Most measures for mitigating the spread of COVID-19 will be dropped. Mask-wearing in public and social distancing will no longer be mandated. I’m not sure how I feel. Having had COVID twice, both times with symptoms, these changes spark a little anxiety. But I also believe society needs to move on.

I don’t think COVID-19 is going anywhere. Given the respiratory nature of the virus and how far it has spread, I don’t think we’ll be able to eradicate this one like we did smallpox. I believe COVID-19 will become endemic, circulating in pockets and causing localized outbreaks. I’m not alone in thinking this. Smarter people who are more familiar with immunology have reached similar conclusions. (See here, here, and here). What this means is we need to learn to live with this virus, as we have with other viruses.

Life Lately: Consistency >>> Intensity

It's a big day for sports today! There was the Copa America final, which I didn't watch as the time didn't work (it's hard to wake up at 1am for football). Then there's the Wimbledon men's final (Djokovic vs Berrettini) which I am very fortunate to be seeing in person. And it ends with the EURO 2020 final, where I'll be rooting for England to bring it home!

The atmosphere at the Stade de France was electric after France won the 2018 World Cup

One of my favorite experiences in 2018 was seeing the World Cup Final alongside thousands of French fans in the French national stadium. The game was beamed live from Russia on large screens and the Stade de France went berserk when Beyonce came out singing "We are the champions" after Hugo Lloris lifted the trophy. Remembering it still gives me goose bumps.

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A colleague asked me last week how I got so good at financial modeling. I immediately thought back to my first few models and how embarrassingly bad they were. I learnt to build good models by sticking with it, asking for feedback and trying again, over and over. (I'm glad to no longer be building detailed financial models but those skills still come in handy). So I figured I'd share this post I wrote about consistency in October 2019 but did not post to this blog.

Life Lately: On Yoruba Nation and Secessionist Movements; Lights Out at General Electric

What else has the current Nigerian government got right asides the trains?

Nigeria is not working. I wanted to open this with anecdotes from my last trip but reading my notes was draining. Is it the needless death; the spike in the number of people, mostly women with sickly babies, standing outside pharmacies seeking help to buy medication; endless kidnappings; or rampant inflation? The present administration is underperforming expectations by a wide margin.

These trends have caused a decades-old question to resurface. Would the constituent parts of Nigeria be better-off on their own? While they never really left, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) is back in the news following a spate of attacks. Calls for a Yoruba nation have regained prominence, with Google searches for “Yoruba nation” peaking last month (the Oduduwa republic was a previous name for a similar idea). The Federal Government went after the leaders of both movements over the past week, arresting Nnamdi Kanu (IPOB), and arresting a cat and allegedly killing two people in a failed raid on Sunday Igboho’s (Yoruba nation) house.