Success is the best form of revenge...

I've seen the posts people write when they graduate, typically thanking family and friends, a nod to the challenges, waxing lyrical about the experience, but I would like take a little bit of a different tack with mine; I would like to talk a today a little bit about vengeance & revenge. Stay with me for a bit, it will be long, and I will waffle here and there, but hopefully it will all make sense in the end.

What a whirlwind it's been these past couple of years for me; a lot people underestimate the strain and toll it takes on the mind and the body to learn institutionally as an adult. It's been bittersweet this past week; I started this particular journey, to Sa?d Business School, University of Oxford in March last year, and now, 5 flights, 4 modules, 160 hours of lectures, 3 submission-double-all-nighters, 1 gruelling final FIA paper and about 40 new best friends later, it's finally done. The challenges we face as Nigerians honestly are incredible, our fees change on an almost daily basis as our currency moves faster than a 100-metre sprinter off the starting block - so there's a constant "can-I-afford-this" gnawing at the back of the mind, and then our economy has been in such constant flux due to elections, multiple currency crises, airlines stopping services to/from Nigeria, global events, and the so-so business climate putting never ending new pressures on ones endeavours; it's a bit much sometimes to deal with, physically, mentally and emotionally, but we put on a brave face everyday and proceed, as we say often in Nigeria, "We Move".

Back to the aforementioned revenge. I graduated many moons ago in 2001 from the 英国华威大学 , and what but a few of my close friends know is that in my final year I applied to Cambridge for a postgraduate degree, and asked my then Warwick final year project professor to write my reference for the application. Sidenote, I'm one of those all-or-nothing type people, I don't do backups particularly; when I applied to university I applied to just one, same for postgrad, same for company registrations today, and just about anything else I do - it's the one I want or nothing, I think I think (repetition intentional) it focuses the world on that singular desire; anyway, I asked my professor to write my reference to Cambridge, and a few days later he hands me the sealed envelope to post to Cambridge. It sat in my satchel for a couple of weeks (yes satchel, I fancied myself a bit stylish back then), and for some reason I simply didn't post it. Then one day I took it out and rather than popping it in a post box - I opened it. Reading the reference he had written my heart sank, it was the most scathing critique of my person, what we would call in another scenario a complete character assassination, and it ended with something along the lines of "...he is not fit to be a student at Cambridge". I should interlude here with some brief family history - my grandfather went to Harvard, my great-great-grand uncle to Oxford, a current uncle at the time Professor Grillo was a sitting Don at Cambridge, two of my uncles are PhD alumni's of Cambridge and Harvard respectively, yet here was this professor whose name I cannot even remember barely 20 years later saying that I was not fit... What a crushing blow you can imagine to my morale, and my very being. I finished the rest of the year, and my project under said professor in a bit of a haze, and went on to do other things with my life instead, which you can all be the judges of whether those things have been adequate or not, (I like to think I've played my small part well, and added more than I've taken wherever I go, as my cousin Lola Akinmade wrote in her acclaimed Swedish book - Lagom - drinking just enough, but leaving sufficiently for everyone else...; I digress again - but ever since then it's been slowly gnawing at the back of my mind - "not fit".

So when the chance to apply to Oxford came round I took it, and half the reason I'm certain in retrospect was to prove the man wrong. Oshone Ikazoboh thank you for that call in January last year, the journey wouldn't have started without you. Twice before I had started but never quite finished an application to both Oxford and Cambridge, but Oshone is the kind of friend that makes you think a mountain is an anthill, to be sauntered across with ease. And o what a year it was! Special thanks to Tim Galpin , Lisa S. and the rest of the fantastic PgDip Strategy & Innovation team at Sa?d Business School, University of Oxford . And to the truly wonderful and talented people I met in class, we will do great things each and every one!

Well here we are today. Done. So that is my vengeance, success. That's the central message here, that the best revenge is always success. It permanently removes the power or hold over you. So to everyone out there, with that unresolved burden, spite, or affront, the best thing you can do both for yourself and to those who caused you to feel other than your true self, is to succeed.

Live Long, and Prosper.