By Ivy Chibanda
I used to have a clear picture of my future, of what I wanted to be and who I was going to become. I would finish my high school, graduate with an Honors degree, get employed and complete my masters so that I would live a great life.
A life I would have achieved from sweating at school. Unfortunately, a day like today, a day in which I Say I graduate next year, I do not have the same pictures anymore, they have become blurred.
I am afraid to listen to the radio news, or read the press because for me, it is depressing to hear the numbers of people being retrenched from work every other day, leaving only but the manager.
I am greatly affected by it because tomorrow I might receive a phone call from home, telling me they have also been let go.
So, what then becomes of my education, my brother’s and my sisters’ future? It seems we are all living at the cliff, waiting for someone to push us.
The graduate is no longer seen as worthy because we all are going to be unemployed graduates at some point. My mates who did not go for their advanced level education are there employed at big firms, because someone they know owns a company or knows someone who owns a company.
What then becomes of me, a mere girl whose relatives also work for someone and are at risk of being retrenched? We then all suffer at the end of the day.
What motivation do I give to my sister who is in secondary school when she sees that working hard in school at times does not pay, as the educated ones stay at home and the uneducated are prospering. It’s about who you know these days and not about what you have.
What hope then do we have as students? Are we studying hard just for the sake of it? What good is it if I get a degree and my transcript stays in the drawers for years just because I have no ‘connection’ that cannot connect me to a job. Will I be but just a vendor to make a living? But there’s no future in it, vendors are being chased out of the streets.
All the pictures I had in my head of the future are now blurred. What tomorrow holds for us is a mystery. For me and the rest of the university students, we can only live with the hope of getting a better tomorrow.
You can visit Ivy Chibanda’s blog: Ms. Resolute
