Dear Future Dimeji

 At the start of my second year at ALA I realised that I was having an existential crisis.

It really hit, like a well aimed dodgeball to the gonads, when one day I was sitting in a physics class staring into empty space, chatting with Sprinkles the rainbow unicorn.  In the chemistry and further math classes earlier that morning, I had lengthy conversations with the chief of the squirgibble gnomes, who are the unicorn’s neighbours and blood-sworn enemies. You see there was a patch of sweet-coconut-bread-tree land right between them, and they could not agree on how to divide it. I had to settle the squirgibble-unicorn dispute or there would be civil war and the end of the world as we know it. In front of the classroom, the teacher went on and on about some physics-y thing or the other.

I held up a hand to silence Sprinkles.

“What the hell am I doing here?”

I looked up at the board with no interest whatsoever in the numbers that filled it, numbers that would have had me drooling two years ago. Numbers that, like the thought of the Sodexo lunch that afternoon, slowly sucked the will to live from within me, viciously pounding my psyche into submission until I put my head back on the lab table and went back to listening to Sprinkles’ woes.

Seventy-five minutes later I sleepwalked out of that classroom with all the vigour of a sack of straw. But in my physics induced vegetative state, I knew two truths. The first was that the loss of the Squirgibble gnomes and the rainbow unicorns would be no great hurt to mankind, let them have their petty civil war and wipe each other out. The second was that I would fail physics and chemistry and further math and every other subject I was currently taking, because I simply did not give a damn.

I had no idea what I was doing in school, but you don’t go telling that to your Nigerian parents. And if physics, chemistry and further math are all you’re good at, you don’t go telling that to anyone at all. I couldn’t even tell Sprinkles because he was busy working himself up into a frenzy over sweet-coconut-bread trees. I was royally screwed.

I needed to find something new to do or fail; fail terribly. And my ego does not handle failing too well. So I decided to go with the best option possible; the utterly dramatic. In a feat of bravado, I dropped all of my subjects and took up Literature and Economics. Admittedly a pretty dangerous and might I add half-witted move for a person in their second year of A-levels, but in my defence I needed the excitement.

And for a while the excitement kept me going, the thrill of knowing absolutely nothing and thus having something to prove. It kept me up late at night studying. But it was not a passion for the subjects that kept me going, but my ego. So the moment my ego became satisfied and I felt I had nothing else to prove, my Squirgibbles and Unicorns returned to me; albeit this time with a different quarrel.

There I was sitting in my strategic sleeping position in Economics class. It was in the right hand corner and Rima’s head always seemed to block Mr Kangami’s view of me. I had rolled up my sweater and made a really nice pillow when they came. You see Jack had planted his giant beanstalk smack in the centre of Sweet-coconut-bread tree land. So they both wanted to armour up and head into the sky, challenge the fee-fi-fo-fum giant, recapture Jack and bring him back to pay for his crimes. How dare he plant the giant beanstalk there? Who did he think he was? Something had to be done.

And I agreed wholeheartedly. I returned to further math halfway through the year. And again for a short while, the thrill of having something to prove invigorated me. I stayed up late studying, turning myself into a hermit and estranging my friends.

But you see further mechanics is a cruel mistress, she loves none and if you seek to master her, you must be ready to be humbled. I did not have the time to be humbled, final exams were less than two months away. So after receiving three consecutive U grades in further mechanics, I realised that I was fighting a losing battle.

For the first time in my life I conceded defeat to a subject. It was EXHILARATING!!! to say the least. Further mechanics taught me a valuable lesson in humility. I bear the scars of my dance with her openly, but I will say this, I could have tamed her, I just did not give myself enough time.  (Yeah right)

By this point there was hardly any time left in the academic year anyway, so I carried on with almost no interest in what I was doing. I took up a million hobbies; origami, drawing (yes, I tried drawing), ken-ken, skateboarding. But none lasted long enough.

I slowly learnt to ignore my restlessness, ploughing through my books like a crazed bull, becoming nocturnal, giving my computer away and staying in my room for days all in the effort to study. I had no taste for the subjects I was doing, but I have developed a strong liking for success. And success meant passing and to pass I had to study.

But since coming home, my uncertainty has come back to plague me. I am sad to say that I am not looking forward to college with as much excitement as I should, because I have no clue what I want to do there and two years is too short a time for me to explore all that there could be.

Two years ago I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to study Mathematics and become the guy who solved the millennium problems, all seven of them. I wanted to win a Field’s medal. Today I have no idea what I want to do with my life and it scares me. What scares me even more is that I find myself listening to my father and his constant suggestions of becoming an accountant. And what scares me the most is that it slowly dawns on me that I will tread the beaten path. I will cop out and spend the next four years of my life studying engineering or something else of the sort. And I find that instead of the outrage at myself that should be, there is a cold resigned acceptance.

Oh and if you were wondering about Sprinkles and the Squirgibbles, the giant killed them and their heads hang from the giant beanstalk.

The End