GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO THOSE WHO POUR OF THEMSELVES INTO IDEAS THAT ARE BEYOND THEM

Volunteering has done me a whole world of good. For someone who has had to survive on very little means for a long time, there is always that tendency to think, why should I spend my time, energies and skills on anything if there wouldn’t be any remuneration? This is indeed a very valid concern. Money must be made after all.

One thing that I learnt early though is that there are many valuable things apart from money. There are things that money cannot buy. Virtues that cannot be translated into monetary value. Things that surpass money in the value that they deliver now or on a futuristic dimension.  Once that understanding is established, you will see the intrinsic value in volunteering, especially to worthy causes where passion is set ablaze, interest is encouraged and skill sets are sharpened.

The day before my birthday, (my birthday was the 23rd of January), I didn’t make any post here because I often forget that I have this app and I am not a big fan either ways. I got the most amazing news from an old acquaintance from the movie club where I volunteered for years in Ibadan, Nigeria. His film about the movie club, featuring snippets of our post-screening discussions, one in which I had a really profound moment had been selected for a movie festival in Paris and he wanted to know if I will like to come to the première with him and possibly address the audience.

I was gobsmacked! You mean to say that my activities in a movie club in Ibadan, Nigeria between 2019 to 2021 will afford me the opportunity to go to Paris (a city that I have always wanted to visit) in 2023. It felt like a dream. It still feels like a dream. All of the arrangements have been made, at no cost at all to me. Barring the French Embassy refusing me a visa, I will be going to Paris next month. Yipee!

Volunteering has been of immense benefit for me. I have stories for days of support, comfort across borders, friendships that enable your dream, validate it, gives life to your aspirations. My volunteering role with Poems from the Heron Clan is another turning point in my story and life’s journey. I will be forever grateful that the universe keeps account of these labours and bring them back in forms that one cannot begin to anticipate.
The universe is glorious 

P.S: I am looking to volunteer in one or 2 human right and humanitarian organisation in Birmingham that does real and substantive work in the grassroots. I am also looking for a poetry community or any community that encourage boundless conversations on culture, politics, history and other contemporary and controversial issues around the university of Birmingham. Please point me in the right direction.
If you have any information or wisdom nugget to impart on getting a Schengen visa or things to avoid. Please don’t hesitate to reach out too.

And still I rise…

© Fumsymoon

WHAT DOES ONE DO WHEN YOUR GOOD ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH?

Nothing is more demoralising for a student as getting a grade that doesn’t reflect the amount of work, effort and hard work that has gone into an assessment or project. This is perhaps one of the most nerve wracking moments on a very precarious journey of academic excellence.

You are torn between second guessing yourself, your abilities and anger that you have been judged too harshly, too unfairly. Perhaps against an unrealistic and impossible standard, given the circumstances. You try to rationalize where your marker could possibly be coming from. What metric did they judge you by?  How did they arrive at this grade? What was their reasoning? How couldn’t they see it? Your hard work, your industry, the sleepless nights that this took from you. How could all of these not have shown through in your work?

Your circumstances is not made better because your feedback reads like mostly positives and no so many negatives and your rubric doesn’t seem to follow the conclusion. It is even more dampening for you that this exact grade mark is what you had in your formatives that you had taken merely days after your enrollment into the programme and which you had to wing based on your skillset at the time as against now that you have been better equipped. Your overthinking is not helped by the fact that you aimed very high on this one, obsessed over every minute detail for weeks and kept striking out idea after the other due to your perfectionist tendencies.

To still get an average grade after all these puts you in that place where you are winded, dejected, unsure how to move after now. Asking yourself what more could have been expected of you. Causing you to criticize your process against uncertain standards. Angry that you seem to be pitched against standards whose expectations you have not been equipped to meet.

Having a grade that doesn’t reflect your effort causes you to loose cheer. To oscillate between a resignation that the system is rigged against you and the hopefulness that you can best it if you apply more smart work, more calculated optimism or would it be better to not put yourself out this way again and have all of your expectations dashed? Perhaps it is better to manage expectations.

Again, you are forced to look within yourself and face off to that question, ” what does one do when your good is not good enough?”

© Fumsymoon