When I was young, since primary school my dream was to become a medical doctor. Going into secondary school, I got into science class and that made me more optimistic that by God’s grace, my dream of being a doctor would come true.

But on moving towards graduation, my mind started to incline towards being a nurse, although I still wanted to be a doctor.
One time when my father asked what I would like to study in future, I answered with “I want to study Nursing sciences in so so and so school”.
He was surprised of my change of mind and asked why I no longer wanted to study Medicine. He said; “Don’t you know that the hardship in studying Nursing is similar to that of studying Medicine? Do you know that nurses are under doctors in terms of hierarchy, and the school you want to apply to gives a diploma and not a degree?”. Because of his words, I stopped thinking about Nursing again.

At the year of my graduation I wrote my jamb and applied for Medicine in a federal university as my 1st choice and Biochemistry as my 2nd choice in another federal university. But unfortunately, I was asked to change the university and the course (to my 2nd choice). I changed it and I applied for Microbiology. There was actually no Microbiology in that university and it was just on their portal. I didn’t go for screening, they released their admission from 1st to 3rd batch and I was not admitted.

So I started remedial that year and wrote my jamb again. I applied for Biology in Yobe state university due to the absence of other Medical courses. After finishing my remedial program,the school called for departmental screening. I went and was screened successfully.
On getting back home, I got a phone call from my friend telling me that they had also started screening for the medical course they introduced earlier. I changed the course again to microbiology and went for the screening. This time, jamb gave me admission in to the department of microbiology. When the school released her admission, by God’s grace, I was given admission. And that’s how I pursued Microbiology. Now, I am a Microbiologist to be…By God’s grace.

Hafsat Buba.
Yobe State University, Damaturu, Nigeria