Dera's Diary

Hey everyone, It’s been a good while since I’ve written. I found myself with a spare moment and decided that I should end my well-needed hiatus. School’s been… classic school I guess. I got a job, which was a huge development for me and I’ve been working for a month now. Being a tutor has stretched me in quite a few ways and I know it will only continue to, but in particular, I’ve realised I actually do like kids. Not that I hated them before, but it was definitely one of the things I was most worried about with the job, and now, I want to get to know them better and encourage them. I don’t think enough people do that. School’s been… classic school I guess. I got a job, which was a huge development for me and I’ve been working for a month now. Being a tutor has stretched me in quite a few ways and I know it will only continue to, but in particular, I’ve realised I actually do like kids. Not that I hated them before, but it was definitely one of the things I was most worried about...

Hello everyone, It’s been a minute since I’ve written. I’ve been settling and then resettling into uni with all its requirements and changes and demands. Getting used to having a heavier workload has been interesting and I’ve had to learn what my new normal looks like. But I’m grateful for the community around me and the people that have been there to support me and even just help get my mind off school when that’s what I’ve desperately needed. In regards to making friends, like many other things in life, it seems to come more naturally when your thoughts aren’t constantly revolving around it. Today I was thinking about some friends I currently have now who I would never have imagined myself being friends with during our first encounters. I think of the way they annoyed me or misunderstood me or just seemed completely different from the idea I had about what my friends would look like. Time and time again in my journey with making friends in different seasons in my life, I’ve had t...

Hello world, It’s been a busy week and an even busier weekend but while thinking of what to write, I started to reflect on some of the life lessons that have been pretty salient recently. God is capable of making things that we would never have thought possible literally happen. Sometimes we notice it and we have that ‘no way’ moment. Some other times, the circumstances sneak up on us and we don’t notice the fact that we’re living in what were once just prayers and dreams unless we intentionally reflect. I’m friends with people that I remember meeting and feeling like I would never be friends with. I’m also friends with people that hurt me I ways I thought I could never recover from or forgive them for. I don’t know if you ever really forget where you started with someone or fully forget what someone may have done that didn’t sit well with you. Sometimes that could mean the end of a friendship. Sometimes it should. But sometimes, tough things don’t mean that relationships, or...

Hello guys, It's been a little while since I've posted on here. The last two weeks have seen me through moving across the ocean to Uni, having a week of international and general orientation and then having my first week of classes. It was a lot, but not necessarily in the ways I expected. Stepping onto campus for the first time, I wasn't as uncomfortable as I expected. My navigation skills are really not up to snuff and on such a big campus, that could easily have been a place of anxiety and worry for me. I thought they would be. Instead, it was exciting. I used google maps to find my way, admiring the picturesque area and not truly taking any time to sleep off the 23 hours worth of travelling. International Student Orientation started and I had to make my way with getting to know a new group of people. I actually saw a lot of personal improvement here in the sense that I was quite comfortable being and walking and eating on my own, but I also wanted to meet people and...

In my house, at least whenever my mum is around, CNN is always on at night. My mum likes to stay up to date with what’s happening and enjoys having CNN as background noise (weird, I know). Anyway, I happened to be listening the other day and one of the speakers (he wasn’t one of the normal news presenters) was talking about the Mar a Lago search with Trump. And he said (I paraphrase) ‘this is something we’d expect from third world countries, not from a country practicing the rule of law’, and this chafed a bit. Don’t get me wrong, even in high school, we were thought to think of Nigeria, our country, as a third world country. I remember cramming a list of qualities and characteristics by which you would classify a country as ‘third world’ or ‘developing’. It wasn’t until I came to the UK to study the IB and learnt some more about this and how these classifications leak into the way these countries are treated globally that it began to upset me. I’m not denying the fact that Nigeria a...

I was talking to a friend today and after discovering that we both struggle with this, I figured someone else out there probably does as well. Both of us were bonding over our mutual inability (sometimes) to just enjoy the good times as they happen. We either spend our rest filled, joyful, ordinary moments worrying about times when things will not be as easy, or comparing ourselves to people who seem to be doing and achieving more. This is pretty natural, I think. I've been doing next to nothing this summer, but when I hear about some of the amazing (and yes, productive) things that some of my friends have been doing, I can't help but wonder if I should be doing more as well. I think in some situations, a reminder can be helpful, especially if you DO have things that you should be doing that you have been postpoining and procrastinating. But (and this will probably echo some of my other posts), I think it's a bit too natural to consistently think that you are behind in so...

The other day, my siblings and I were talking about our high school. We went to a boarding school in a little known state in Nigeria for our six years of secondary school and my brother had commented on how much better our experience would have been if we were allowed to bring phones. My sister and I immediately jumped on his argument and disagreed, stating that we believed it would've made things really bad. Personally, I have very strong introvert tendencies. I'm more comfortable on my own or with well established friendships and my idea of a comfort zone is a situation in which I don't have to go out and talk to people I don't know or mingle and come up with small talk. The beauty of secondary school (despite all its flaws) and the camps that I was able to attend as a younger teen was that not having a phone MADE me stop and look at the people around me. There was no cushy comfort pillow for me or for the people around me to land on when we didn't want to talk a...