Pre-Script: I am an unapologetic generalist.
I design electronics, I code, I write poetry (I’ve probably lost that gift), loves doing physics, I love drawing (I’m quite good, when I choose to show off).
Growing up, every kid in class was asked to pick a future career, the class teacher asked, “what is your future ambition, Adebiyi?”.
“Err…err… I wantu be a …err”
I was unable to answer that question, I still cringe when people ask that question. They want discrete answers, concrete…fixed. I was a spectrum guy, continuous.... non-local.
I wanted to be an artist, I wanted to build useful machines, I wanted to understand what made people ill and die, and fix it! (No, I didn’t want to be a doctor). I wanted to cook delicious meals, and play the piano like a virtuoso. I wanted to write like the greats. I could not say all these in class, the class would yell “Ade the I.T.K!!!” in chorus. Yes, I was a bit of a know-it-all in primary school.
So I didn’t answer the question.
My LinkedIn bio says “I build stuff”.
Society chose careers for us without our full consent, “oh the girl is good at arithmetic, she will be an engineer!”, what if she wanted to be a burlesque dancer who happens to love number theory? Nobody asked.
The human brain is made up of an estimated 100 billion neurons making a total of 100 trillion neuralconnections. Our capacity to learn, unlearn and re-learn is almost infinite.
We under-estimate ourselves. We wrap ourselves in a cocoon of excuses, “Na Naija you dey, you wan dey build computer…e no posibu”… “How many successful poets have you seen around”. We soon start internalizing these limitations set by society, therefore once we fail or the journey becomes arduous, we give up. You can be a damn good mechanical engineer and an A.I expert, you can be an amazing spoken-word artist and talented engineer. There is no dichotomy, it only exists in our minds. Life isn’t binary, why should our choices?
So today, I free you from the prison behind your eyes. Go ye into the world and kick-ass! Mediocrity is the only sin.
This is my first post on this medium, pun intended. I will be irritating you with my adventures as I dabble into whatever my mind chooses to do, whether it is soap-making, machine learning, electronics design, carpentry, researching African history, poetry, genome editing or physics.
PS: “So Mr Adebiyi, what is your future ambition?”. To create, stupid!