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| First years students at Kibabii University |
So, you have finally qualified for campus after working so hard in high school; the admission represents to you a much-needed break from parental control at home. Many of you leave home emotionally famished and eager to explore relationships.
When I ask most of you to describe the relationship with your father you always tell me 'It's just there.' For ladies, you've never been loved by a man and you can't wait to try it out.
Now listen carefully:
1. Shed your naive perspective quickly.
You're now out in the world and here, unlike your family and your church back at home, nobody cares about you. Everybody is primarily looking after their own interests. Do NOT trust anyone quickly, assuming they're honest just like you.
Convert yourself from CHILDLIKE INNOCENCE to INTENSE REALISM: in the former you're honest and true to everyone, hoping people will reciprocate and be sincere back to you. This will go on until you're ruthlessly exploited by one of the predators in the human jungle. In the latter, you detach your feelings and wishes from coloring your interactions, and instead, you focus intensely on people's actions to read them for what they are.
You also analyze yourself with objectivity and get a grasp of your weaknesses, for example: 'I'm love-sick, so I'm vulnerable.' 'I was controlled too much at home so I'm likely to go too far in asserting my freedom.' 'I'm the first to get out in my family so I cannot afford stupid mistakes like indulging in drugs.'
2. You blink, you get pregnant. Be very alert.
The level of ignorance among campus 'freshers' about reproductive health is alarming and to me as a professional, outright annoying. Listen my little sisters: it takes just one careless act of having unprotected sex and you're pregnant. The baby daddy will take off because he was just having fun, not trying to become a father. And by the way, he DIDN'T love you he just wanted to have you. And an unplanned child in campus will take you through a living hell. Imagine when you're a dependant yourself and then you get another dependant?
The solution is two-fold: abstain or get reliable family planning. E-pills are NOT reliable. They fail more than half the times. One lady had 2 kids by 3rd year, and when I asked her about family planning she was just ignorant 'I thought I was too young to use them.' But you didn't think you were too young to have sex or have a boyfriend? An unplanned baby will take your life in a completely different direction.
3. Most of you think what you need to get from the university is a degree and a partner: WRONG.
What you need is financial autonomy and practical skills. If you're not investing your time to become financially independent and to master some skills YOU'RE WASTING YOUR TIME on campus, I don't care the degree you're pursuing. Do not spend the weekends held up at your lover's house or playing wife to some dude who is as lost as you are. Do not party all weekend: do not read-only for exams: leave these to fools.
Instead, covert all your lectures to something practical, and invest all your spare time in building networks outside the campus. Convert your passion into a business, however small.
4. If you have a choice, DO NOT STUDY FROM HOME, coming to school and returning home every evening. Better to stay in hostels and learn to live on your own. If your family won't allow this as soon as you finish campus or during long holidays take internship very far away from home. You need practical life skills and if your family is too controlling you'll never mature unless you claim your freedom in some way.
5. Date with a light touch.
You can actually find a good partner in campus, as long as you observe these rules about campus dating:
a) You're evolving very rapidly and in 5 years you could be a totally different person from who you are now.
This is the dynamic that breaks most relationships that started in campus. You started together but you grew in different directions or at different speeds. Keep this dynamic in mind and DO NOT start living together or even start the marriage process until you've confirmed that your FUTURES are compatible.
b) A child should come after marriage, not the other way. If someone begins to ask for a child before they marry you, be very afraid.
THANKS FOR YOUR TIME ALL THE BEST.
By Isaac Wesonga
ALSO READ : Ponyoka Na Fresher Operation - where wolves hunt for fresh meat.
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