Brilliance alone may not take you to the top

Brilliance alone will not suffice for you to climb the ladder of success – you will need shoulders at some point.

I was a very precocious child, my mother said to me. I asked many hard questions and was always inquisitive. Growing up, I challenged the status quo to the fury of some grownups. I slipped a little bit when I was in Grade 2, I played a lot and did not pay attention to my studies so much so that in one of my exams, Bible Religious Knowledge, we were given a multiple choice question, and we were asked “In what river was Jesus baptized, and there was option of River Ogunpa (a popular river near my elementary school then) and River Jordan, and I chose Ogunpa. I remember because when I came back to my senses at the end of the session and I saw red marks in my Report Card for the first time, I cried for days. I never looked back since. I was always among the top 1% of my class for the rest of my Elementary School, Secondary School and during my Bachelor’s degree. I prided myself in being brilliant. I never bother to ask questions in class, because I could figure things out myself.

When I got to graduate school, I realized that this approach was no longer sustainable. I needed to work in groups where I had to share the opinion of others in group work. I needed a quick turnaround in knowledge acquisition to cover for deficiencies of being a pioneering student of first of its kind program in the whole of Africa – Food Engineering, and I needed to ask questions of my mates who had Food Science background and had to engage my professors, else, I risked scoring below par marks. When I started my Ph.D. program, I realized the importance of being humble and riding on others shoulder even more – it was a strange country that was extremely cold and no scholarship, and I had to fend for myself at the onset while going to school. I had to depend on others a lot to make sure I passed. I understood the importance of mentoring and most importantly, not to burn bridges with those on whose shoulder I climbed to see ahead. My advisor was a brilliant but a difficult person who used negative epithets as a way of getting you to work (he never saw anything wrong in his approach because it had worked for him with others in the past without consideration for their mental well being, and because most of his students are always at his mercy for little stipend he gives that puts food on their table). I endured these hardships, and remain eternally grateful for the opportunity he provided me while I hate the experience of “you are not productive”, “I can’t see anything” for 4.5 years, yet the experience produced the highest number of publications by any student he has ever had in his career. I did not complain nor did I rebel. It took him 10 years for him to mutter courage to say thank you, this was after I had started working as a faculty at my current job. My time in his lab was productive professionally, I learned a lot watching things from afar but I had many reason to fight and curse, I chose the highway. I had occasions to be disrespectful and call him names, I chose to be wise. I had a similar situation with my post-doctoral advisor in the US. He was a workaholic, and he made everyone under him to work at almost the same pace. He micromanages but was very generous with support for his staff. This was where I learned most of the skills that positioned me for a faculty position today. The relationship could have ended many times over but I chose the highway again.These two played pivotal role when I was seeking a permanent position. I vowed to mentor my students differently - what I realized is that many young folks of today only live in the moment - while I laid down my career to fight for my students, I see that some of them cared little about relationship, they only care about now, what they can get in the immediate. The professional circle is so small now that we know ourselves - I have seen this play out many times over and over again. Those who take advantage of a situation often get played into a corner. You can never rise if you keep burning all the bridges on your up. Those you stepped-on on your way out may be the gods that you will need at a cross road, when the bridge is broken, you will never be able to reach them. Who loses, you?

I made a choice not to burn bridges even though I was in a difficult situation when working with these mentors. They became handy when I needed them most, and they remain a resource till today. Professional fields are often very small, when you burn bridges and bit the fingers that once fed you, it has a way of coming to hunt you. While I will not encourage anyone to maintain a toxic relationship, mine were manageable. It is important to know that people you climbed on their shoulders on your way out and you burnt the bridge, you may still meet them out there. There is a stage you get to in life that self-acquired knowledge alone will never help you gain traction and speed to where you want to get to. You will always need people – peers, subordinates and superiors.