Labyrinthine

 

Many people have a linear approach to life. Ever since they were kids they followed one straight rule: playgroup, primary, secondary, university. 

For me it started that way and somewhere along the line there was a crack- I lost my mum to cancer and the line became curvy. 

I was eleven then, a troubled child with a lot of bad traits and trauma, including sexual abuse, that maybe one day I’ll be comfortable enough to talk about.

A few years after the loss I had to move away from everything I knew. In my family’s defence they probably thought it was best for my mental health. So I changed schools after Junior WAEC and went to a new city. Oof — I was so excited. 

For me, it was finally time to reinvent myself. It was the first time I decided to stop being average. I wanted to be smart, to enter school competitions like my former classmates, to be class captain, to lead.

Did I do all of that? Of course. I remember my first day in VCC — SS1. I was the transferee, fresh out of Lagos, with a crazy full head of natural hair my sister had spent minutes trying to part down. My teacher walked in, introduced himself, introduced me and two other transferees, then asked for volunteers to be class captain and assistant. I got up. I was so determined to be different. 

I didn’t want those new people to know I used to be shy and awkward; I wanted a new me. 

Of course I got picked and suddenly I had teenage enemies, but I remembered how elated I felt. I thought to myself, Oh Eunice, welcome to the new you.

I became so diligent in my studies; I started to read — why? Because I didn’t want to be average. I used to be that kid who was 12th or 14th in a class of 30 or 40 students, somewhere almost in the middle. One of those students is good in one subject and almost good in 15 others. For me that subject was Business Studies — funny, right?

Back to it: I changed. I started having lots of As except in Mathematics, of course. It was wholesome. I suddenly could compete with the two brightest students in VCC. I was at the top. It felt good. I went to school on a high and wrote exams with so much confidence — unlike the old me who would intentionally arrive late on any day there was a test. I stopped being just good in one thing; I was good in everything except Maths.

Fast forward to SS2: I decided to take JAMB. Why? Because I knew I would have to drop out soon, even though everyone at home was tiptoeing around the conversation. I came out and said I’d do the exam. While my friends played every weekend, I had my head bent over books and textbooks, reading and preparing ahead. It was also the first time I told myself I was going to pass Mathematics. Sure enough, I took JAMB and scored 246. I felt on top of the world and it was also the first time I had a C4 in Mathematics.

Then the inevitable happened: I dropped out at the end of SS2. I didn’t graduate, didn’t do prom. I thought I was emotionless, so I shrugged it off. Then UI didn’t offer me admission — they didn’t find my data for the admission process  and that was when life started happening to me.

I tried Cambridge A-level and I was excellent in class. I took the pre-exams and had A*, A and B. With more study time I could have had all As in the finals. Exams came and I couldn’t pay for them, so yet again I dropped out of A-levels.

I took JAMB again and scored 274. I was so excited; I was 18 and sure I would get admission. I did UI post-JAMB with 70/100 — an A on the dot but somehow everyone passed that year and the cut-off was high; my course needed 72. I didn’t get in. They offered me another course in an affiliate school which I didn’t even see until time to write JAMB again.

After failing to get into school the second time, I followed my heart into the corporate world. Thankfully I had amazing older friends I’d interned with during summer holidays in secondary school, so it wasn’t out of the question to get a job at 18. I became a brand associate for a good friend; it paid decently. I went to JAMB classes and dance classes on weekends and worked during the week.

But I felt out of place. Everyone around me had a BSc or even Master’s degrees and there I was, a teenager who had dropped out of everything over the past three years. I felt like a gross failure, but you could never tell how deeply damaged I felt — I always wore a smile and played a lot. Yes, I used to be so playful. Two months in, I resigned and told them I wanted to focus on JAMB. It wasn’t entirely true. The truth was I’d started to dread my life; every time I went to work I felt like a failure. All my friends had gotten into school; my A-level classmates were in 200 level or abroad.

I felt useless. A parent once commented that my dropping out was silly, as if I hadn’t already lost enough. Church, my happy place, became hard to attend because it reminded me of how I was failing — or so I thought.

A year later I scored 244 in my third JAMB and got into school. Exactly two months after resumption the school went on strike. I genuinely felt like the bad omen affecting the 54,000+ students there, and two weeks later the world went into lockdown. After lockdown the strikes continued for months, and that pattern stretched for the next two years.

Somewhere in those years I stayed in the corporate world and ran my other clothing business on the side until 2022. Shortly before I started OfadaEtc, my family encouraged me to find other schools to transfer to because of strikes and the fact I was 21 and still in 100 level. I got admission to several schools and, late 2022, I received a partial scholarship to ALU. All the while I was contemplating whether to drop Unilag. I decided to defer and told myself I’d come back. I left in 2023.

For the first 74 days at ALU I was joyless. I couldn’t shake the feeling that even though it was a new beginning, it seemed like I’d quit something again. Two weeks later I came back home and told myself, Eunice, we are going to do something crazy again: let’s do both.

That semester in Unilag after I returned, I read like a mad dog. I think to date it’s the only semester I read that much and it ended up being my lowest grade point in six years at Unilag. It still hurts my soul. It was also the first time I ever cried about school results. I wailed over courses I’d tutored others in and expected As for. I felt punished. But I had the best support system — he never let me give up.

Meanwhile my grades at my second university suffered; I had a carryover in my most important course and had to retake it. So I found myself taking ten compulsory courses in Unilag and ten in my other university while running OfadaEtc at an optimal rate.

If you ask me how I did it, I couldn’t tell you. I was just so focused on the end goal that I went along with the craziness. That semester turned out to be my second-highest grade point in my six years at Unilag.

I didn’t finish Unilag with a first class but I was damn close, and I finished ALU on a 4.0 in a school where an A is 90💀

So if you ask why I did two BScs, 

I think now I can honestly say I needed to prove to the 17-year-old Eunice that she’s not a quitter and she can do any f*cking thing she puts her heart to — and so can you.

And this is a fraction of my labyrinth.

Happy Graduation, Oluwafunmilola — you’re a superstar and you’re two degrees hotter!🥂💗✨

Picture Credit: Topboy photography

Copyright: ©black_christian

Babatunde Eunice 2026