ZEAL MANAGEMENT

I studied computer science and engineering at my first degree before switching career later to education. I became a teacher because my mother had raised all her children as teachers. She’s a teacher and has run her own school for decades now. So, even though I love creative designs and my passion was in digital creativity graphics design, software design or hardware designs – education was the only place I had known, to showcase my passion. I just love creative designs. I want to design everything I see. But the only space I had always known to operate was in school, in education.

So, I got a job in an international school with about 900 children fully boarded. The job came with accommodation within the school premises. The work was really enormous. Though I taught ICT, I taught year 7 (Jss1) students who were very new to secondary level and then I taught year 10 too (SSS1 1) who were young new to senior secondary. So in the first 3 months of work, I had little or no interaction with my laptop, needless to talk of doing any design or writing any codes. The work I had before me was huge. Being a new job, I must prove my mettle. I must prove that the employer’s monthly offering is worth it. Also being a young person, that Job came with an impressive pay package! I even started planning my wedding.

I lost My Zeal

You see, I worked for 3 months and it got to a point, I started losing my zeal, even though it was a large organization as the school had annexes across the nations major cities. I began to feel this vacuum in me that needed to be filled. I wanted to design again. I just would love to see me doing it again. My zeal for the job, started waning. The simple reason was that even though I loved the teaching profession and it’s all I had known right from childhood, I love some other things – designing, coding, digital creativity – all which I had to stop doing for a while so I can focus on this new ‘big’ job.

So I needed to boost my zeal, to stand any chance of keeping this job or excelling at it. The environment is tense. Performance is key, as that’s the only thing that secured your job. I needed to find a meeting point between what spurs me on, what makes me happy and the visions and goals of the school. I needed to connect these 2 divides. Of course I’ve told you earlier that the primary aim of every business venture is to at least make profit, so they can remain in business. That is quite understandable considering the quantum of employment the private schools generate. In Lagos alone, there are over 20,000 private nursery, primary, and secondary schools.

So in this particular school, I had to come up with something creative to help me keep loving the job, I was already losing my zeal.

I will share this novel idea in the next post.

Have you lost your own zeal too, or are you beginning to lose it? You need to bring it back. Even though, I loved the pay, yet, I’m gradually losing my zeal. You may say, well, this or that is what I’d have loved to be, but no thanks to unemployment, that’s why I’m here. Lets just thank God you’re here now.

You know, chances are, if you hadn’t landed the job you have right now, you may still be out there hunting for one. All these ran through my head at that time, and so I knew i must do something to hold grip of that opportunity, before I lose it and regret that. Just follow me. This may be speaking to you too. Actually it speaks to everyone. Many of us have allowed our sentiments, though sometimes genuine – limit us from operating at out peak at work. We complain of pay, management, parents and The Nigerian economy. We claim the school is using us, and paying us peanuts. “They are using me”!

We claim the organization is managing resources to maximize profits, thereby over-burdening the teachers. We claim the school owners slam it on our faces that they own their school and were only like tenants. We claim all sort of things which many times are true.

You’re the first victim of your own sentiments, just as you will be the first beneficiary of a better you.

We forget that every time we defy our sentiments and operate at our peak in anything we do, not minding the reasons discouraging us from doing so, what we are imparting in ourselves is far greater than the material reward we wished we got. No amount of money can pay for your time. Especially when you have to spend one third of your life serving an organization. The real reward is the fulfilment you get from knowing that you spent your life and time in that place imparting lives and doing so to the best of your ability and not with mediocrity. Your real reward is being confident that as you exhibit the real you and all of it, displaying all the skills you have in that school, you’re sharpening those skills and preparing yourself for a bigger phase of your life, and your purpose for living is already being fulfilled. What a noble way to live!