“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And more important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.” – Steve Jobs. Discuss. Have you ever felt alone while walking through the crowded hallways of a school, that you never wanted to be at in the first place? Have
Tag: Blogging Prize Shortlisted
X and Y: Nothing but Letters
“Denvers, Carl R.” “Magna Cum Laude!” At last. The chromatic dais reflects in my entire eyes and the incessant gaiety of hands seems endless. Lots of countenances are staring at me, grinning as they have one’s eye on my steps on a soft red carpet in the broad auditorium. “Congratulations,” uttered the guest speaker, Mr.
Defining One’s Best Normality
Triggered by Albert Camus’s quote that: “Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”, I wonder if the quote is completely true. Come to think of it, Camus was born 1913 and died in 1960 which means that this issue has been brought to light around a century ago. Rather than
Big blue whale in an ocean too small
My childhood was spent with my parents and siblings in this tiny dot on our world map called Sitka, Alaska. I will have to admit that I painfully miss the freezing temperatures, the snowy landscapes, our small but warm red brick house and our chubby ginger cat named Honey. I never felt so attached to
Culture not Costume
As a lover of travel and adventure, I have learned over time that every country, every city and every home has a culture of its own. The beauty of culture surrounds us consistently. Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, that’s up to us. There are many aspects of culture and each one roars
The Tree Tale
Hi, I am a Chestnut tree. For many decades, I have been standing here. I have witnessed many changes around me, but what has not changed is the way we have been caring about others. I still remember the words of the biology teacher at the school, “Children! You just cannot imagine how much potential
The Role of Education is to Broaden Our Minds
A popular Tibetan Proverb goes… ‘A child without education is like a bird without wings’. Many people view this as cliché, but we all know how true this is. Perhaps, the question that begs answers is: “Can it really be possible for us to fly”? This question was posed many years ago by Daedalus in
‘Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character give him power
Indeed, the truth in the statement above cannot be denied. I totally agree with it. Before presenting my points, however, I would want to explain three key words in the topic: ‘adversity’, ‘character’ and ‘power’, for better understanding. The Oxford Advanced Learners’ dictionary defines ‘adversity’ as a state of misfortune or calamity. It also defines
You’re Not The Man I Married, And Other Alleged Betrayals
Some years ago, a batch of trigger-happy policemen patrolled the streets of Lagos. Upon being given guns, the power of life and death in the pull of a trigger, they turned from protector to aggressor. Raising their guns for everyone to see, they would extract huge sums from a driver before allowing the vehicle to
If Bill Has 17 Peaches, How Many Of My Classmates Are Still Starving?
For the third day in a row, our college algebra teacher drones on about the functions of a graphing calculator. He hesitates as he moves from step to step, as if any of us are paying careful attention to the dozens of ways to solve for the invaluable solution of ‘x’, using a machine that
Education in the Laboratory
Education, when considered broadly as any process which involves delivering or receiving new knowledge or perfecting skills, is a rather delicate topic to deal with. Defined this way, words such as ‘uneducated’ cease to exist because everyone has received some new knowledge at one point or another. E.g. We all learned to speak. For specificity,
Normality is an Illusion
What does it mean to be normal? In this modern age, normality seems to be an illusion when one looks at the mass globalisation and the mixing pot of cultures, languages and religion. I work in healthcare and our sector is obsessed with normality. Your cholesterol level means nothing to me unless I can compare
Save the planet
In a world fixated on fossil fuels and revised economic systems, there’s no surprise that the individual comes first. However, is that truly more imperative than the world that mothers us? As humans we have a strong tendency to put our needs first; we always look for what benefits us. Ultimately this psychological mindset has
A broader education for a more well-rounded student
What most easily comes to mind when we think about education is the academic stuff. For me, it’s a dark green board filled with equations; you know those long monstrous ones that look like they were invented specifically to torture non-genius minds? Those things give me the jitters. Yes, of course, academics are important and
The paradox of arts today
Rajabu admired the Tuesday evening hustle at Posta. He was seated in the bus heading towards his university, and today he was glad he could sit by a window. People were crossing the road amidst buses, private vehicles and motorcycles in a dizzying frenzy, many heading home after a busy day at work in town.
Are co-ed schools the best environment for students?
When in 2010, the 107 senior students from the Urban Prep Charter Academy for Young Men in Chicago achieved 100% college acceptance, the situation caught the attention of many. Only four years before, just 4% of them were able to read at grade level. Since then, this outcome has been repeated every year. This success
Sustaining the Inner Artist
Art is a subjective field. With that said, the world is a huge canvas. In whatever industry one is involved with, there is art within. We are all artists. We have always been right from our early years. In the words of the famous Spanish painter, Pablo Picasso, “Every child is an artist”. However, he
Painting as an art
Art is the painting of the old masters that hang in museums. Many people would never think of visiting such museums. A great number of people do not understand such old and new forms of painting. They do not understand that such old and new art forms are part of everyday life. It is all
Love Is Like An Apple Tree
Tim lives at the end of a very long road, at the foot the Bluff, and a long way up the valley. His garden is overflowing with life – purple potatoes, green beans, and many apple trees. A rippling stream runs between the cottage and the weaver’s house. Everything Tim eats comes from his garden.
A wonderful fruit
It’s written biblically about the forbidden fruit that our ancestors [Adam and Eve] ate. It’s always beating the religious leaders’ minds and even threatened to create public judgment on them, but it all comes to be cool when one says that the husband and wife enjoyed an apple. Apples are class s pupil-fist sized sweet