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A Story of Pure Growth & The Beauty of Multi-Dimensional Thoughts with Destiny Ogedegbe
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In this episode, Veronica discusses with Destiny Ogedegbe a recent Harvard Alumnus and Finance Associate, Paul, Weiss, New York. Destiny talks about growing up with very little and his unconventional path to studying Law at the University of Benin. He challenges the mainstream critique of academic excellences and provides a more holistic lens to education. From writing his final year dissertation on his phone to doing his masters program at arguably the best school on the planet. His story is one of pure inspiration and determination that you definitely would learn a lot from
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Transcript
Introduction and Background of Destiny Ogedegbe
00:00:05
Speaker
Don't judge people who have academic excellence by very shallow standards. No, you are already compromising the academic system if you do that. Where I come from, lots of people don't even go to college. Like, when we are done with secondary school, people do many odd jobs. That's how I got the nickname possible. My students then, they gave me the name because it was very mind-blowing that, oh, someone they know is actually studying.
00:00:31
Speaker
Hi, grow getters. Welcome to another exciting episode of The Growth Podcast. I have with me here, Destiny Ogedegbe. And Destiny is a corporate lawyer who has achieved academic brilliance throughout his life, and he holds a law degree from Harvard Law School.
00:00:48
Speaker
and he graduated top of his class in college with a first class degree and of course he also graduated with a first class degree from the Nigerian law school and his expertise lies in project finance, M&A and energy focused transactions. Welcome Destiny to our podcast, it's so good to have you here. We were supposed to have Destiny
00:01:09
Speaker
a couple of weeks back during the International Youth Day event or for some technical reasons, we couldn't have you here. So finally, we're having him on the podcast and I'm so excited. Welcome again, Destiny. Thank you so much for honoring our invitation. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. I'm incredibly delighted to be here. Again, I'm sorry I missed the other time for technical reasons, but I'm very much delighted to be here and to do this, to have this podcast. So thank you very much for having me.
00:01:39
Speaker
And for your very generous introduction.
00:01:43
Speaker
No, no, that wasn't generous enough. So I'm just going to give you some time to introduce yourself. I know you have a lot of fans. In fact, when we put out the registration for that international event, we had a lot of people sign up just because they wanted to listen to Destiny. And on that day, a lot of people really wanted to have you on. Yeah. It's incredible. So it's a privilege for me to actually share this stage with you today.
00:02:11
Speaker
So I'll give you the chance to introduce yourself properly and then we'll just kickstart the podcast conversation.
Early Life and Self-Education
00:02:16
Speaker
I think you've pretty much introduced me, but I'm just going to add a couple of things here and there. I am a corporate lawyer. I'm Nigerian. I'm currently based in the United States.
00:02:27
Speaker
And more particularly practice project finance, which is just corporate lingo buzzword for saying, I help people get a ton of money for projects. You know, they want to build a railway. They want to build roads. They want to build a new hospital. They need money for all of that. And then, you know, you have to meet lawyers and I'm one of those persons who typically advise on those kinds of transactions. Um, besides my professional work, um,
00:02:56
Speaker
I like to think of myself actually as a very simple, very simple person. I enjoy pretty much the same thing that everybody else enjoys. I like to go out to people, have a ton of friends that I routinely go out with, and I enjoy playing soccer and chess. So that's as comprehensive as I can offer for myself, really.
00:03:23
Speaker
Thank you. It's no surprise that you enjoy playing chess because I actually think that chess will be smart. I get that every time. I don't know that to be true, but... All the smart people I know know how to play chess and they know how to play really well. Well, I can't deny. I can't confirm or deny. I'm just going to leave the camera.
00:03:52
Speaker
OK, so we just go right into the episode and then, yeah, we'll take it up from there. We'll start with your background and your childhood experiences. I want our listeners to know a bit more about who Destiny is. A lot of them probably already know because there are a ton of articles out there about you actually. So if you want to know more about Destiny, I'm going to link some articles in the show notes, but I'll give him the chance to talk more about his background, his experiences.
00:04:21
Speaker
Like you heard, he had double first class. That is no small feat. I'm not supposed to speak that much. I thought I was just going to talk about my background. Well, I mean, it's part of your background at this point because you've passed Harvard, yeah? So you could chip that in if you want to. Okay. Stop wherever you want to stop with it, yeah. Okay. I grew up in Binesity, Nigeria.
00:04:49
Speaker
and I have four siblings. My parents, both of them are from a those states, Bini by tribe. And I lived the better part of my first two decades in Bini city. I went to university of Bini. I went to all of my schools, secondary schools, primary school, back in Bini. The way I tend to contextualize my background is a very typical family
00:05:19
Speaker
that you would find somewhere around the 2000s and 1990s in Benin. Usually those families are
00:05:29
Speaker
I can't use the word poor because when we were growing up, it's not like we all knew that we were poor. Everybody was just at the same level, so it's hard to tell. We did pretty much the same things, but I like to describe those families as very communal. We did pretty much the same things together because we needed to combine resources to do all of the things that we got to do at the time.
00:05:52
Speaker
So I grew up in a very communal environment. My mom would usually go to the market. She was a trader. She used to hog food around streets. So I grew up with a lot of people, not even with family. My dad was not around at the time. My mom was the person really in charge of my upbringing. So
00:06:17
Speaker
Whenever I talk about my background, I tend to always mention my mom because she was very instrumental to my going to school and everything. I can still recall sometime around 1999, the year 2000, she used to put me on a wheelbarrow and drive me around while she's hockey and she dropped me in school. And when I'm done, she comes, she picks me up the same way.
00:06:38
Speaker
She almost spoiled me because I was her first son. And she used to get a lot of remarks from people around that, oh, your son is very smart. Because like I said, I had to contextualize it by saying, I grew up in a very communal environment. She wasn't always around because she was walking. But when she comes back, they tell her, oh, your son is so smart. Your son is doing this. And she always had that very strong sense of pride. So when it was time for me to go to school,
00:07:07
Speaker
I didn't go to school very early. My sister was going to school at the time. My elder sister, she's a year older than I am.
00:07:14
Speaker
I didn't go to school for financial reasons. My mom could not combine the both of us at the time. When I was ready to go to school, she took me down. I don't know if it's still the same categorization, KG1, KG2, KG3. That was how it was at the time. So I was supposed to start from KG1 because I was just starting school. I remember when I go to school,
00:07:36
Speaker
you know, they gave us this test then, you know, I passed the test because my sister, she used to come home and she would teach me A, B, C, one, two, three, I knew all of those things well before I started school. I could write, I could, you know, write chicken scratches here and there and I could also, you know, spell those things. So I did incredibly well and they told her that I would be too, I would probably be too smart for KG1. So I started from KG3.
00:08:03
Speaker
I don't think I've said that in any of these conversations before. Maybe this is the first time I'm saying that. I think it exactly starts school from the crotch. I started from KG3. And then when I was in primary three, I got the double promotion to primary five.
00:08:20
Speaker
So all of that sort of covered for the fact that I didn't start school early. You know, children usually start KG1 from like four years old or maybe even less or somewhere around four. I think I started somewhere around like seven years old. I was pretty, you know, yeah. So all of those double promotions, they just, they sort of net off the time I spent at home. So usually when I tell someone, oh, this my age and this where I am, it sort of makes a lot of sense, but they don't have that context.
00:08:49
Speaker
Yeah, my mom and my dad, my mom and my dad, they at some point we were separated. So I spent most of my time with my mom, like I mentioned earlier, my siblings to spend all the time with my parents, sorry, my mom. The striking feature of my background would be the fact that I had much more liberty than many people.
00:09:14
Speaker
And that also is just from the fact that my mom was hard labor around, she had to go sell. So I learned a lot of things personally. I was, you know, my academic growth and everything, it all boiled down to just a very early sense of curiosity at the time. I used to read tons of books. When I was much younger, now it's so sad that I'm getting old. I can't remember a couple of things now.
00:09:39
Speaker
But when I was much younger, I used to be very, you know, very quick. I could recite tones of literature or Shakespeare. I was so curious. I read so many stuff, you know, just on my own. I just found those things very fascinating. And it sort of paid off because I was doing very well in school, all through my primary school down to Secretary of State. I left the country school. I was always top of my class. You know, when I think about it now,
00:10:06
Speaker
Sometimes I wonder why my parents never took the initiative to maybe take me to a different school because, I mean, if I have a child that comes top of his or her class from like kindergarten to secondary school, at some point in time I would want to change the school because it's either the school standard, it's not all right, or the persons in his or her class, they are not maybe strong enough to compete.
00:10:32
Speaker
I think it should have been maybe a bit more forward-looking to go to a school where I had much more challenge. I remember then in primary school, even secondary school, I would take first position. The next person would be like 200 months behind. It was not exactly very competitive. So I don't tend to say so much about my schooling process, but I didn't enjoy it. I did more things than academics. I was always playing football.
00:10:57
Speaker
and other stuff, because school was relatively easy for me. But I don't attribute it to smart. I think it's just a thing where I didn't exactly go to the best schools for financial reasons. So I was not in the environment where ordinarily I would have computed a bit more aggressively. So it was just one of those things. But I think the upside to that experience was I had a lot of time.
00:11:23
Speaker
And when I said time, I had a lot of time to do things on my own, to think about my life and my academic pursuits and prospects. So I took the initiative to do a lot of things that were going to help me personally. And I'll give you one example before I round off this question. A typical example was when I was in secondary school too, the school I went to, unfortunately that year,
00:11:49
Speaker
We lost our government teacher. I think he went, he left the country or something like that. So I became the government teacher of my own secondary school. Crazy stuff. He was so crazy. Yeah. I was teaching my classmates. We had this, he started from this literary club that I set up. I was, you know, I would teach English government literature and stuff like that. And so when the teacher was in there, I officially became the teacher. So whatever they were to pay me a salary, I would just use it for my school fees. And it was pretty smart. I think my school fees
00:12:19
Speaker
was like 2000, 900. It was just one of those makeshift schools. It wasn't really the best of schools. So from doing that, I really developed my ability to study
00:12:33
Speaker
actually consciously learn rather than passively. Because most of my exams, I passed them passively. I didn't have to sit down and read and get scared, oh, I'm going to do this or I'm going to fail. Most of the times, it was just passive. It just looked very easy for me. But from teaching,
00:12:50
Speaker
I, for the first time, had to study a lot of things actively, knowing that I was going to teach people. So it developed my ability to stand before people, to speak, to think on my feet, to, you know, all of those benefits that typically come with it. And when I was in senior secondary school three, I started teaching at an electoral center outside school. So I would do that then. Before I wrote my work, I
00:13:16
Speaker
I did something really crazy, and I think that I attributed a lot of things to this particular phase in my life, where I decided that I was going to start studying outside the house. So at night, we used to have this lecture center. I was an uncompleted building just about 10 blocks away from my house. I would go there at night, and I would study all through the night, come back in the morning.
00:13:39
Speaker
and I would go to school or I would go teaching, whichever. Like I said, I had all the time in my hands. So it wasn't like I was in this regulated environment where I had to act in a certain way. So yeah, I was pretty free to do all of that. And it helped me for like a year. I was always studying every single night, no TVs, nothing. We didn't even have a TV at home. It was, like I said, very poor environment. So all I did was study.
00:14:05
Speaker
And after that, I started teaching jam students, post-TPME students. It really, really, really, really helped me. It helped me in the sense that when I eventually got into college to study law, I can remember my first year in the University of Benin. I was always
00:14:22
Speaker
absent from class because I was teaching. But when the results came out, I had a 4.9 over 5.0. And people were like, who is that guy? We don't even know this person. But the reason it was that simple, it was that easy for me to study and pass was I was already doing that. I was used to studying a truckload of stuff.
00:14:40
Speaker
just committing them to memory and going to people and just teaching them. So when I started, we were doing English and literature, Economics 101, basic stuff. It just seemed like all I needed to do was study and pass. And I was already used to, I developed my cognitive abilities to that extent. So it was pretty much a workover for me.
00:15:01
Speaker
until we graduated to that level where law actually became the dragon that it is. But yeah, I think I'll stop here.
Choosing Law and Academic Journey
00:15:10
Speaker
I think that decently contextualizes my background.
00:15:16
Speaker
It sure does, and you sure had a peculiar childhood. It is peculiar. I could never have guessed all the things. Yeah, it is very peculiar. That's why when you became your own, your teacher, or the teacher to your cosplay, it's like, how? Yeah, it's very, very strange. Very, very strange.
00:15:36
Speaker
Yeah, it is. And I think, yeah, that explains a lot how you became really independent. I think the kind of childhood you had
00:15:47
Speaker
give some context to who you are now. I was going to ask, my follow up question was going to be like, what part of your childhood now influenced who you are? But you now explaining how you had to teach from a very early age, just to explain a lot. I do not need to ask that question again. I was just wondering why you have now become a lecturer.
00:16:08
Speaker
but now you're pursuing law. And also, what made you even study law? Because it seemed like you had a ton of options. Yeah, yeah. I actually had an offer to lecture when I left the University of Benin. I think I was basically just predicated on the fact that I had a first class from the faculty. Usually, I think when you have a first class, it comes with it. Naturally, you get an offer. I did get an offer.
00:16:38
Speaker
I would want to lecture at some point, but not now. I think the reason is just I find it very unfortunate that if I were to go back to lecturing in the University of Benin,
00:16:51
Speaker
by just immersing myself in that system, I'm going to be polluted, whether consciously or unconsciously. I understand the risks to taking up the endeavor as beneficial as it is, as almost altruistic as it is. I know that it's also quite risky because the environment just doesn't cater to some of the things that I would want to bring to the table and
00:17:15
Speaker
It's just not the way the thing works, but all of the problems are systemic. You can't just come and provide an individualistic perspective or approach that would basically transform everything. It has to take time. I'm going to get old. I'm going to be unfulfilled for the better part of my career. So I don't think I want to do that now. My plan now is to practice, you know,
00:17:38
Speaker
get all the money that I can get eventually come up with an unconventional school system. I've been tinkering around that for some time now, and I think I want to do that. I want to set up an institution that has little or no barriers. And what I mean by that is the way that I've been able to orient myself academically and intellectually is such that I don't know exactly
00:18:04
Speaker
conform myself to the more structured system in our academic environment. What I mean is this. I have a very decent background in the sciences, but I'm in the humanities. I practice law, right? But I'm always very interested in the sciences. I could discuss physics in ways that if you did not know I was a lawyer, you would probably think I'm completely something else. And I think the reason I do that is because
00:18:33
Speaker
I tend to look at the world as a carnival of different thought processes condensed into one. So we all exist in a very vast consciousness of ideas. Some persons are closer to those ideas so they can tap from them, but we are all actually within a spectrum of several ideas above us.
00:18:55
Speaker
Our very small minds tend to draw distinctions between all the sciences, the art, physics, and biology, but the truth is nature does not know any of these boundaries. As far as nature is concerned, all of these things exist so people can know them, right? And all of knowledge is to some extent connected. I have once, I remember when I was in Zimbabwe sometime this year,
00:19:17
Speaker
I was speaking to some of the students in the class. I was talking to them about law, but I was using a mechanism in physics to explain it. And I saw that they understood it much more better because it was just different. They understood what I was saying much better because I was able to connect
00:19:35
Speaker
something in the sciences, to the arts, and I like to have that flair and freedom to basically flirt with knowledge. I can take you down from a scientific perspective, maybe to a psychological perspective, or a philosophical perspective, or a legal perspective. And that's the kind of academic institution I want to run, I want to set up. Obviously, it's not going to be some large stuff that the whole country adopts,
00:20:03
Speaker
I want to be able to glimpse on people to see knowledge in this perspective. And that's something I would do when I'm a bit more settled financially and otherwise. And yeah, I would tend to pursue that. Just the second part of your question, why did I study law?
00:20:20
Speaker
Well, I don't think at the time I was deciding to study law, I had any peculiar reason for studying law. I wouldn't say I was motivated to study law because I saw maybe Gandhi following me. I basically just alluded to the fact that we didn't even have a TV for years. So I'm not going to sit here and tell you, I saw some persons speaking law and oozing with this radioactive strength of law and blah, blah, blah. No, that was not the case. I actually wanted to study
00:20:50
Speaker
I think it was English and literature. Yeah, English and literature. That was what I feel in my jump form. And I was intending to study that not because I also so loved the English language and I want to be a lecturer. No, it just seemed that what was easier to do at the time. My uncle had studied law. My uncle owned the lecture center where I was teaching. So at the time, I just never saw a lot of persons studying law.
00:21:18
Speaker
It was just, it was so remote, you know, back from where I come from. Lots of people don't even go to college. Like when we are done with secondary school, people do many odd jobs and stuff. So I didn't know exactly when I was studying law. My sister, my sister, when we were growing up, she was the smartest person I knew. My immediate elder sister, she's absolutely intelligent. And when she decided to go to school, she studied international relations. I was like, okay.
00:21:45
Speaker
Maybe I should even do that, you know, but I didn't want to do that because she had already done that. So I was just looking for something else, but it was never low. Law just seemed like out of the question, right? So I remember one night I was studying at the lecture center. I told you my uncle came and he told me that he heard I was going to feel English and literature in my junk form. I said, yes.
00:22:07
Speaker
I'm still thinking if it was English and literature or ISD, I can't remember which exam. And he got so pissed. He took the jump from me, toyed. He said he was going to buy me a new jump from that. I should feel low. Why do I think I can't get low? Of course I can get low. I can even teach jump students. These people want to write exams on the past. Why do I think that I can't study low? And I talked about what he said. I was like, oh, that actually makes sense. But I went to
00:22:33
Speaker
Yeah, he bought me a new jam form. I chose law and I wrote the jam exam. I think that was 2013. Yeah, 2013.
00:22:44
Speaker
That was the last time Jam used the old paper type pencil. Yeah. So when I wrote that exam, the results came out. I was like, you see, uncle, I told you, this is not the kind of result that will get me law in UNIVEN. I was like, no, just go and write it for CUTME. I was expecting to get it to 90 or 300.
00:23:06
Speaker
And I was just looking at myself like, I don't understand what happened. I can't petition this result. I don't know what happened. But this doesn't look like my score. I was so certain. I did so well. I was flustered. So I secretly started planning to change my course. In other words, this change of course from, I don't know if it still exists now. I like to imagine it does. I was scheming. He would pay me. He paid me.
00:23:33
Speaker
$5,000 there sometime around, I think, mid-2013. That was my salary for the month after teaching. I took that money after about four different trials that failed. For the first time, I took that money, went to a shop and asked this guy, I want to buy change, of course, from change that law and my job to mask him or something. That's why I write this positivity and I just go to school. And the guy told me that the only place I can get the change, of course, right now is in Abuja. It's no longer in the States.
00:24:03
Speaker
And all the times I was trying, he would tell me, I don't have it today, come tomorrow, I'll come, he would say, there's no change of cost for me. That's where I grew up. Maybe you should go to another, you mentioned a different place in the state. Whenever you have it, just let me know, I will come and get it. And then he told me, the only place I can do that right now is Abuja.
00:24:22
Speaker
I think something was just speaking to me. Something told me, why are you so scared to have this positivity and go to law? It's not like you are not smart enough to pass this exam. You've been teaching people to pass this exam. You've seen all of these questions. What exactly is the fear? I just decided that moment. I didn't even go back home. I decided right there and then.
00:24:41
Speaker
that I wasn't going to change this course anymore. I took the money, went to the market. I came home with, I think, two pair of black trousers and three pairs of white long sleeves. I was ready for law. I had accepted my fear. I said, you know what? Just go write this post-TPME. I even passed. And as law could have it, I wrote my post-TPME. I think I was the highest in my class, but I had it in 1996.
00:25:08
Speaker
So it was off the charts. It was unbelievable because I almost had a paper score in my position and I was so scared all the while. That was how I got the nickname possible. My students then, they gave me the name because it was very mind-blowing that, oh, someone they knew is actually studying law. But like I said, it just wasn't common to find people studying law.
00:25:31
Speaker
you know, at the time I was teaching and in just that environment. So I don't have a particular reason with just a set of circumstances influenced primarily by my uncle, but I did eventually find a reason to persist with law and then practice it while I was already a student. So it wasn't something that happened before. It was something that happened during the process. I was expecting to tell us what that reason was like. So what made you continue?
00:26:01
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I guess what made me continue was I discovered that I actually, I wouldn't say actually like locals. That's a very
00:26:14
Speaker
That's a very pedestrian way to put it. How do you exactly like law? Law is just a body of regulations and stuff. The practice of law, on the other hand, can be quite fascinating. I used to go to, you know, we had this more and more competitions. I represented Uniben a lot of times. You know, I won a lot of awards. I think I had about five awards nationally.
00:26:36
Speaker
So all of those things just gave me the sense of, oh, you can do this. You can probably be the next gunny. I always saw myself as a litigator, going to court, speaking my Lord, this and that, because that was what I was used to. But the truth is it wasn't exactly about being a litigator. There was something in me that got triggered in the process. And that thing was, I love to solve problems.
00:27:00
Speaker
It happens at a professional level. It also happens at a more granular level in terms of my relationship. I'll give you a simple example. Every day of my life, I am either solving a problem for my younger sister or my friends.
00:27:18
Speaker
There's always something I'm doing on my WhatsApp. If I wake up this morning, my sister's already asking me, she actually believes I know everything in this world. I would tell her, just use Google, don't disturb me, or use chat GPT issues. I say, no. She wants me to answer, she wants to hear my perspective. The truth is, as much as I tell her off, I really enjoy solving problems.
00:27:38
Speaker
And that was something that law provided me with immediately. There are some professions where you are doing a whole bunch of stuff, but you can't exactly see how all of these things are relevant at the grander level. But law is not that way.
00:27:53
Speaker
For law, you can immediately see the impact of what you are doing. You are solving someone's problem. They have an actual problem. Someone is telling you, they just stole my car. Or someone is telling you, I want to buy this company. Elon Musk is telling you, I want to buy Twitter. These are real problems that real people have. And you have this very deep sense of fulfillment when you can walk through
00:28:14
Speaker
those problems and come up with an actual brilliant solution, right? So it's not so much about law, it's just something that I love personally, and it plays out in my more immediate relationships. Like, even besides like my family, my friends too, I enjoy
00:28:31
Speaker
talking about their problems and just walking through my own thoughts and sharing my perspectives. Like, just, I'm moving from this job to the other. I have an interview. What do you think? What perspectives can you offer in terms of how this should be done and whatnot? And then I started, okay, this is what I think. I always enjoy those things. And law
00:28:50
Speaker
very early in the time of my growth, showed me that this is an avenue for me to explore that part of me. So I just stuck to it. Even though I did not eventually become a litigator, I'm still very fulfilled with the practice of law because everything I do fits into the kit and cabo dolo of my very personal interest. And that is being able to solve problems.
00:29:15
Speaker
is probably why I play chess. I play chess every single day of my life. I can literally count the amount of days in a year I don't play chess. It has to be something serious. Maybe I'm writing an exam or someone is about to die. It has to be really serious because almost every single day I play chess. It's just something really
00:29:34
Speaker
I like things that make me feel, okay, I'm moving through a haze of knotty issues and I'm providing solutions. So yeah, that's, that made me enjoy the practice of words, awful and tedious as it can be. Yeah.
00:29:52
Speaker
tell me about it. I myself studied law and found myself outside law. It was very crazy. But yeah, it's good to know that you knew exactly what you wanted, what you liked, and thankfully the career path that you happened to be in helped you fulfill that. Your story is very, very inspiring.
00:30:19
Speaker
And I really hope our listeners realize by listening to your podcast episode that everything is possible. So moving on, what does success mean to you and what has been your biggest driver for success?
Defining Success and Career Milestones
00:30:35
Speaker
Okay. You know, that question is so interesting because it's interesting primarily because I could think of it as in three stages. When I was in school, what success meant to me was different, right? When I started practicing, what success meant to me was different. Now, more recently or comparatively recently,
00:30:56
Speaker
coming to the States, going to Harvard. What success now means to me is even quite different. So I've had a sphere of moving from one phase to the other in terms of understanding what success means. But to cut right into your question, I would say I would define success as just incremental development. And I use the word incremental specifically because I cannot really imagine an end to
00:31:24
Speaker
success. Society would create different definitions for success. If you're a corporate lawyer in the US, for instance, you work with the top law firms in the US, you want to become a partner because that's how society defines, at least in a corporate world, that's how the corporate society defines your strength as a corporate lawyer in a law firm. You want to be that person.
00:31:45
Speaker
Now, when you become a partner, you're not settled because there are some international directories that begin to assess this partner and say, oh, this one is a highly regarded lawyer in this practice. There are, you know, there are a lot of buzzwords for distance, right? We cannot simply be settled because society would always create ways to stratify each of us, right? You can think of the entire world itself as a Grammy event.
00:32:12
Speaker
But people are not comfortable with that. People want to be part of another Grammy ceremony where they get a special Grammy award. So there is always this craze to want to be something, to want to be defined by society in very many ways and across different levels.
00:32:30
Speaker
And I realized that there's just no end to that. So I have decided to adopt a more personal definition of success. But at the same time, I don't want to be naive or delusional. That's why I use the word incremental because I can say, for instance, well, I'm going to define success however I like, but that would be delusional because at the end of the day,
00:32:50
Speaker
individuals do not exist without society. You are part of the society. Without knowing to approve of it, you would be defined by society for society's sake. So you can't just come up with the definition that is personally self gratifying without no connection with the real world. And that's why I say incremental, because on the one hand, I'm conscious of the fact that
00:33:12
Speaker
I can't just be chasing everything on anything because it just doesn't end. But on the other hand, I want to be making progress. So I have tended to define success as incremental personal development. So I would define success today in comparison with tomorrow. Sorry, in comparison with yesterday. How was that yesterday?
00:33:34
Speaker
And last year, where was I at? Right now, where am I at, right? So, just two years ago, last year, I can remember how, I can remember the kind of problems I was having. I don't have those kind of problems now. The kind of problems I'm having now, how do I get, how do I learn this role at the World Bank?
00:33:55
Speaker
I wake up thinking, how do I travel to Indonesia? How do I apply for that visa? Those are not my problems two years ago. So I tend to define my success quite ironically and paradoxically by the quality of the problems I have today.
00:34:11
Speaker
And if those problems are better off than they were maybe last year or even last month or even last week or even yesterday, I think that I am making good success. And I love that definition because on the one hand, I'm not cut out from the real world. I'm still making tangible progress that aligns with what people would see.
00:34:28
Speaker
a success, but at the personal level, I get dissatisfaction every time I look back and I'm like, oh yeah, I'm better off than I was yesterday. I'm a nonbie where other persons are, given other factors that have influenced their lives, but are much better than I used to be. So I always want to have new problems, but that's how I then define the quality of my life, the quality of my problems, you know, they quite define the quality of my life as well. I would say that's how I define success very, very summarily.
00:34:59
Speaker
Thank you so much for that. I think your perspective of success is very interesting, very similar to how I see it as well. And when you talked about quality of the problems that face you now versus the kind of problems you had yesterday or a few years back, it resonated lots with me. And I'm like, hmm, I've never thought of it that way, but like, hmm, actually.
00:35:25
Speaker
He has a point there, yeah. That's very interesting. So what would you say are the biggest steps that you've taken to advance your career? Yeah, two, actually. The first biggest step I took to advance my career... No, I think I'll make it three, but I'll keep it short. The first is...
00:35:55
Speaker
deciding consciously to graduate with a first class from the Nigerian law school. It opened a lot of doors for me. I wouldn't say Uniben. It wasn't because I did not consciously decide to make a first class in Uniben, at least not until my final year. So that was just one of those things where I was lucky not to have made mistakes, not to have taken it lightly, right?
00:36:18
Speaker
But at the law school, I was deliberate about, you know, I need to get this first class, but it will help me get certain jobs. And that was the first big step I took. The second big step was coming to Lagos. Now, when I finished in the event, I always thought of myself as, I'll probably practice somewhere in Benin, maybe become an essay in Benin. You know, my dreams were very small because like I always tend to tell people, you can't really be smart about what you don't know.
00:36:47
Speaker
an elevated perspective to drag your intellect to another level. Otherwise, you are going to play within a circle that your imagination can catch. So speaking with friends from the law school, everybody was talking about Legos, talking about the top law firms in Legos. Have you heard about me and I? Have you heard about Alokwani? I did not know these firms before then. I was like, whoa. What are these firms that will tell you? These are large firms. They have about 200. They have 200 lawyers.
00:37:16
Speaker
How can you frame half 200 lawyers? Because all of the small offices are named Benin. You have one partner with maybe five lawyers and one that helps them buy food every afternoon. So it was a completely different explanation, right?
00:37:30
Speaker
And so I decided that, OK, fine, I'm going to leave Benin and come to Lagos, stay with a couple of people, and try to get a law firm, try to get a job. And it worked out. 2019, when I just finished taking the by exam, I came to Lagos. I was staying with a friend somewhere at Kitsu. And I came to the NBA conference. It happened at a hotel that year.
00:37:53
Speaker
I met someone who linked me up with a senior colleague from my school that I did not know at the time. I met her for the first time and we were able to get an internship for, she was able to get an internship for me at Banh Wanigudalo in Lagos. After the internship, my law school result came out. It was the first class. I applied to the firm and they then accepted me as an associate.
00:38:15
Speaker
If I did not come to Lagos, the truth is I could have stayed in Benin after I finished the bar exam. I was like, no, let me steal my friends in Lagos. I was moving from one place to the other, from K2. I go to a lack barrier. And then I met a senior who then brought me to equity very locally. And that was where I was going to be a knife from. So it was a very bold decision. My life could have gone completely differently.
00:38:40
Speaker
if I did not stay in Lagos within those three months before the buyer results came out. So I tend to think of my moving to Lagos.
00:38:48
Speaker
has very important to my career advancement because I know for certain that there are a ton of smart people in different places, in different environments right now. They just don't have the opportunity, not just the opportunity, they don't have the right set of information to tell them, okay, you know what? If you were in this place, your life could have gone completely differently. They don't have that information.
00:39:13
Speaker
They are stuck up somewhere. It's not because they're not smart. They are probably even smarter than we are, but they didn't get that information. So I'm always cautious of where I'm at. Am I in the place where I can get the kind of opportunities that befit me? Because at the end of the day, you can be everything
00:39:34
Speaker
You can be everything you can think of, smart, genius. If you don't place yourself strategically in the right place with the right people, you lose a ton of things. And life is so incredibly short. And that's the problem. We have a limit, a very terrible, humiliating limit. And that's age and death. So when a lot of years have gone down the drain, those opportunities, they become farther, farther, farther from you.
00:40:00
Speaker
I don't joke with the fact that I made that decision to come to Lagos. It's very, very important. I think of it as the catalyst that just led to a whole lot of other decisions that followed through. And I think the third, maybe now thinking about probably even the biggest, would be deciding to come to Harvard. And I remember before I made that decision, it was also a lot of guesses, a lot of misgivings and
00:40:29
Speaker
Could I get accepted into Harvard? Should I even bother applying? Because I was getting comfortable. I was, when I left, when I left Benin, I had, I think I came to Lagos like 19,000 then. I was used to just taking care of myself, finding for myself. My dad and my mom, you know, they broke out.
00:40:49
Speaker
I was very young when I left home. I started living independently. I think I was like 17. So most of what I have known was just to work, save money, take care of myself, maybe look after my younger siblings as well.
00:41:06
Speaker
So, imagine now getting a job and feeling very comfortable. They are paying you about, you know, before I left Vietnam, I said I was about 500k or so. So, I was getting comfortable. I was like, why would I just take all of this money, pack everything, crunch it into dollars and go to a different place because I want to study. My friends were telling me, no, no, no, you can just apply. If you get it, maybe you get some scholarship, you can take it. But if you don't get it, fine.
00:41:32
Speaker
you still have all of the money and it made sense to me. I was like, okay, I'm just going to give it a try. But because I was still very rebellious, I decided to apply to just two schools. My friends told me, no, apply to many schools. Do this LSAC thing. There's this thing in the U.S. they call the LSAC. They help you to aggregate your applications to different schools so that it has a bit more structure. I said, no, no, no, no, no. Is there any school that I can apply to that doesn't require the LSAC?
00:41:58
Speaker
Coincidentally, the school was out of the way. Even the best school does not require that. Thank you. So I said, I'm going to apply to just Harvard at Oxford for this year. I don't have money to waste. I'm not very sure about this idea. So let me just do all these ones. Then if I'm not very, very ready, I can begin to fire applications and cast my nails very well. It just turned out that the two schools I applied to, I got both of them. So I was like, maybe God is just saying, this is the time you have to leave this country. Maybe this is the time you have to go.
00:42:28
Speaker
So yeah, I thought about it long and hard and I was like, you know, I'm going to take Harvard because
00:42:34
Speaker
And sometimes I get the question, why Harvard? I think the reason is just very simple, because it's Harvard. I don't really know a lot of things to turn down at Harvard admission. I mean, it's just Harvard. It's just what it is. You have that name. It's one of the names you want to be reckoned with for life. So I just decided, I'm like, yeah, I'll go to the US. And I will use this to upscale and get jobs and then begin international legal practice.
00:43:03
Speaker
So far so good, the planners, you know, it has worked out the way I envisaged and it was, I think it was the biggest decision I've made for my career, for my SIG, because right from this moment,
00:43:18
Speaker
going forward. I cannot even explain the kind of person I'm about to become. It's a different life. The practice here is a lot more sophisticated. You are meeting much more sophisticated set of clientele. You are doing much more difficult stuff, but also more rewarding. The pay is astronomically different. The environment is astronomically different. So I cannot even imagine
00:43:42
Speaker
It's more like everything I would have gotten in Nigeria in 10 years. I'm about to get it in like 2-3 years. So I can't imagine a better definition for a big push to anybody's career, literally speaking. That was just it for me. You probably saw me laughing and smiling throughout you.
00:44:04
Speaker
Your speech was very interesting. When you said, why Harvard? Because it's Harvard, I'm like, yes, because it's Harvard, period. I mean, I don't think there's anything else to say with that, really. Exactly. Speaking of your decision, your conscious decision to graduate with the first class.
Education and Skill Development: Beyond the Classroom
00:44:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:23
Speaker
I think we should talk more on that because lots of our listeners are undergraduates. And among a lot of young people these days, there's these belief that school is come and a lot of people don't even see why.
00:44:38
Speaker
people should try to make it first class. And I appreciate that the system hasn't made it that easy. Lecturers frustrate students and all and we see people who have graduated with first class and we see that some of them don't even have anything to show for it in the end. So what advice do you have for people like that who think school is a scam? Very interesting question. When people say school is a scam,
00:45:07
Speaker
I think they are missing two things. The first is they are limiting the benefits to schooling to material success. It's far more than that. It's way more than that. And the second thing is they are also very short-sighted about the
00:45:34
Speaker
possible impact of what they're doing in school in the outside world. So you really think about it. People who have succeeded academically, that's even a stretch. People who have gone to decent schools, they don't even need to succeed academically. They would hardly tell you that squeezes come because you don't even need to be the best student in your class to know that, OK, the impact of what you are doing here has far-reaching consequences.
00:46:01
Speaker
to your entire life. And that is where people get it wrong, especially in a place like Nigeria. They get it wrong because many lecturers, many people, many mentors, many professionals, many persons who have made it in Nigeria, they don't take time to really explain its distance in ways that people would understand. And the way I put it is this simple. It is not about the school itself. It's about the things that you
00:46:30
Speaker
begin to learn in school that are not even related to the school system as a whole. I'll give you a simple analogy to put this in proper perspective. For the sake of our audience, I'll use something very relatable. Let's think about football. Now, footballers do a lot of drills.
00:46:51
Speaker
a ton of drills, actually, during their training. There are times where you want to play football as a professional, right? You go to a training, you don't even kick the ball. They will tell everybody to lie down. And I know this because I've been, you know, I play football a lot. I worked with a lot of clubs when I was back in Benin, so I know the way professional trainings go.
00:47:13
Speaker
Sometimes you lie down, they'll be hitting the ball on your stomach. And you'll be waiting, let's just play football. I mean, that's why I came to training today. You are wearing your boots, you are all in full kit. But you do nothing related to football. Sometimes they'll stick a bunch of poles and cones around. You do zigzag movements. Nothing absolutely related to the game itself.
00:47:35
Speaker
or everything you are doing there, while you understand that they are independently relevant, they have their own value in and out of themselves. They are not exactly the things you would do in the pitch. You will not just see Messi zigzagging because he likes to zigzag in the pitch. He's not going to do that. It is the same way
00:47:55
Speaker
you find people in class. Now, you have a class, the lecturer or the professor or the teacher writes mathematics and maybe calculus. You are studying calculus, right? Or maybe even physics. Just think of any of these difficult subjects. You are talking about general theory of relativity or special theory of relativity.
00:48:13
Speaker
and the lecture outcomes are all right about the instance, whatever principle is there. And the students are wondering, what's the benefit of D-Y-D-X? Am I ever going to make money with D-Y-D-X? Students say these things a lot, but you find some teachers who don't really understand. They start to explain to the students, and don't worry, when you take up a job in Chevron,
00:48:33
Speaker
You'll see a lot of mathematics in your job. That's not the best answer to give these people because the truth is most patients who studied mathematics, at least at the secondary school level, they never get to use mathematics in their professional careers. They are not going to take jobs that are mathematically oriented. That's restricted to a very small fraction of the class. What teachers should tell students instead is the reason you are learning distance
00:48:57
Speaker
is just to learn how to solve problems. Whether this problem is relevant or not, it's not even an issue. It's not what you should concern yourself with. You will never use the YDX. Just tell them plain and simple. Don't even think about it. In your entire life, you may never get to use the YDX. The reason you are studying this right now is so that you learn how to think logically and analytically. That's all.
00:49:19
Speaker
Now, there are very tiny bits of things that we do over time, the aggregate to make us a certain class of people. We may not be able to trace those things in hindsight because they are so minute, they are so subliminal, right? But they are the things that are proven to make you depressing that you are. Now, let's go back to the football analogy.
00:49:42
Speaker
When Messi wants to play a free kick, he plays the free kick, it goes into the post and everybody shouts. The truth is, when he was practicing all of that, there were a lot of very tedious, basic stuff that he had to learn. He would go to the gym and lift weights. He did not score that goal because he was lifting weights, but that weight lifting was very subliminally related to the skill. He needed to score the goal. So the point I'm trying to make here is this.
00:50:08
Speaker
When you go to school, stop thinking about school in terms of the kind of work you are going to do eventually or without all of these things you are learning will make you get money. The truth is it has very little to do with that. You may be fortunate to get a job that leans directly. That's fine. But that's not that's not what makes you, you know, respected after school. There are two there are two factors at play here.
00:50:32
Speaker
If you go to school and get a first class, you are going to be respected for getting a first class. A lot of doors will be open to you for getting a first class. A lot of people want to speak to you because you have a first class. That's really because that's how people work. People are going to make impressions. They're going to judge you based on those things, right? But that is not even the most important thing. The most important thing is what it does to you personally.
00:50:59
Speaker
I remember during an interview, someone was asking me, I got that offer, but I remember telling the HR, the HR asked me, oh, you have very fantastic grades. Then I just left law school. I was like, well, are you street smart? I told the HR, with all due respect, how do you think people make first classes? And that was my answer.
00:51:20
Speaker
Everything you are going to define as street smartness is precisely what people need to make first classes, at least in federal universities. Do you know the amount of skimming it takes to make your first class?
00:51:35
Speaker
I mean, you probably just think it's about reading and passing an exam. Do you understand what it takes to eliminate your competitors? You have a lot of smart people in the class and you're taking the class. And, you know, let's say contract, for instance, everybody knows what Korean Missa is, consideration. Everybody knows Kalyan Kapolek Smogbo. Everybody has read it. Everybody's coming to class. Everybody wants to take the exam. Now, the best person in the class
00:51:59
Speaker
It's not even thinking about those principles. It's thinking, what am I going to write? How am I going to write my answers in such a way that...
00:52:07
Speaker
I will be more likely to get an A than every other smart person in this class. That takes a whole lot of strategy. If I sit down to lay out the strategy I've used to make a first class in school, or even in a general school, or to earn a Dean's Scholar at Harvard, or to get into Harvard to begin with, you cannot even possibly imagine it. The way people define street smartness is maybe your ability to avoid trouble or all of these things. But no, it's much broader than that. Apart from the academic scenario,
00:52:37
Speaker
Your ability to eliminate your competitors, first of all, I define that to be a very critical factor in your ability to solve problems or your ability to stand up. We're not even talking about the academic rigor of spending hours to study and all of the resilience that comes with that. No, I'm just talking about the mental process of ideation, trying to place yourself in that position where you get favor from persons who don't even know you on the basis of just your answers. Do you know how much you have to think
00:53:07
Speaker
to put yourself at that level, and not just once. You have to do it consistently for five years to be the top of your class every single year. Do you think you are the only person that wanted to have that first class or be the best graduating student? I mean, a lot of other people. It means that whatever you are doing, those things strategically eliminated those persons at every level. Do you understand what that means? I have to break it down to make I understand that.
00:53:31
Speaker
Don't judge people who have academic excellence by very shallow standards. No, you are already compromising the academic system if you do that. What you get from trying to get good grades are there are some things that are direct, like getting the grade. Obviously, that's your direct goal. But there are a lot of things that are subliminal. Those things build you into a certain person. And those are the things that money actually cannot buy.
00:53:57
Speaker
I don't know if you get my point. The point here is school is not scum because, sorry, let me put it this way. You made core school, the whole idea of going to school, is scum if you judge it by very shallow standards. If you judge it by maybe the ability or the capability for someone who got a good grade to get a good job, no. There are a lot of factors that can make that not happen, at least in a place like Nigeria. You can be so smart and not get a good job, right?
00:54:22
Speaker
But if you judge the academic system and the benefits of that system by much nuanced standards, you know that it's not a scam. To pass through certain levels, there are a lot of skills you learn very unconsciously. How you speak, how you think, how you write. Now, these three things
00:54:41
Speaker
they're going to be with you for life. I have been in places even at Harvard. I remember a professor at Harvard, she was writing a reference for me, and she described me as uniquely eloquent.
00:54:54
Speaker
Now, I did not learn to be eloquent at Harvard, no. I didn't even spend up to a year there. I did not learn that at B&I when I was working. It's a combination of a whole lot. All through the process, you learn a lot of things in beats. All of those things accumulate to build a certain person. That is the person that carries the value. You are the value, you understand?
00:55:16
Speaker
I think people who just judge those things, who say those things, they are judging the whole point of the academic system by very shallow standards. And I think one solution to that is to tell people the truth from the get-go. Don't make people believe that they are learning to grow.
00:55:32
Speaker
to achieve a specific end. No, there is no specific end, especially if that end is a good job or money. No, those are very shallow ends. Everybody will not get that because numerically doesn't even make logical sense to read that conclusion. We are so many, the jobs are so little, how is everybody supposed to get that? So that cannot possibly be the goal. The goal is that in the process, you learn certain things, things that you may or may not even notice
00:55:56
Speaker
But they basically transform you. They make you think in a certain way, act in a certain way, a way that is much more conducive to certain standards that you are now more likely to get on account of those things that you have learned so far. And I think that's really the best way I can put it, at least within the time that I have here.
00:56:17
Speaker
In fact, I was going to use your profession. Your professors were uniquely eloquent. Thank you.
00:56:27
Speaker
I know that was a lot, and I hope that many people are listening to this, they're able to speak. I know I just packed a lot of things there, but as we go the way I think, I'm trying to catch my thoughts. I'm trying to chase them because they can be very fast. So I try to catch them as I'm speaking. That's absolutely fine. I could
00:56:49
Speaker
100% relates with you when you were talking about the other skills you learn from school, which is what you need actually because most of what you learn is called in real world. You forget it anyway. Exactly. You forget it anyway. And even for lawyers, for most professional professions, you just learn it in school. But what you're doing in the real world, even if you've learned it in school, you probably need to read it again because you've forgotten most of it.
00:57:15
Speaker
But what counts are those other skills? And when you were speaking about street smartness, it just made me start thinking about how we think of people who strive for academic excellence, generally, and how we just box them and think that these ones, they're not street smart, they're just book smart. But we also have recruiters who have voiced concerns around
00:57:39
Speaker
like them not having complimentary skills, which they need in the corporate world. And by this, I mean the soft skills. So what advice would you have for people who are really good academically and all, but they are struggling with those complimentary skills and the soft skills, especially. Okay. So my advice would be this. I think that anybody who goes through a standardized academic system,
00:58:04
Speaker
is capable of learning at least 80% of anything that is required for the area in respect of which they've professed their competence. And what they may be lacking is the experience. I'm a very, very fortunate individual, fortunate in the sense that I grew up in
00:58:22
Speaker
a certain environment where I learned to pick a lot of things myself. So apart from just being good academically, at a very young age, I was already in situations where I could speak to people, I built confidence, I built a lot of things, all of these soft skills in that process. What I think some persons lack, however,
00:58:43
Speaker
is the exposure to do any of these things. So I mean, to the extent that a recruiter can bank on that person's academic prowess, you can be reasonably certain that they can learn those things in the job. So it's not your question of, would you want to take a chance on them? Because really and truly, when I go to Lagos, my firm took a chance on me, right? And I say this because when I started, I knew nothing about the corporate world. Let me tell you how bad it was.
00:59:13
Speaker
It was so bad that I did not know how to use the laptop. And that's a core technical skill for a lawyer in a corporate law firm, because it's a very fast-paced environment. Why did I not know how to use the laptop? Because I never had one. All through my school, my project, the book I published, I wrote everything on my phone. I had an Android phone then. I would be looking at it for nothing and typing. That was how I did everything. I had no laptop, not in school, not in law school.
00:59:42
Speaker
I definitely did not have the money to buy that, so it was out of the question. The first time I had a laptop, I'd take this laptop, it'd be using it. That was when I got the job. So I would go to Google and I learned everything. I had to do basic functionalities because I had friends who had laptops. I would see some basic stuff. But I knew that I needed to learn much more, like how to split your screen to have two screens looking at you while you're working on two documents. I learned everything on the job.
01:00:08
Speaker
The first month was crazy, so crazy that if I wanted to send an email to one partner, sometimes I would mistakenly copy the entire firm. And they'd be like, no, that's not how you're supposed to send it. But none of those things, but I knew my problem. So none of those things got to me. None of those things made me question my intelligence. Like, oh, you, with your double face, but I look at these stupid mistakes you're making, no. I was always very kind to myself because
01:00:35
Speaker
Whenever I make a mistake, I ask myself two questions. Where is this coming from? That's the first thing. Is it a mistake because I failed to think or because I did not know? There are two different things. There are certain things, there are certain mistakes you made because there is simply no way you could have thought about what the right thing would be because there's probably an experiential gap between you and whoever you are dealing with. So there was literally no way possible I would have known these things, right?
01:01:02
Speaker
I remember COVID hit 2020. That was within the time I just started working. We were having this meeting where I was sharing my screen on Zoom. I didn't even know I was sharing my screen. They were calling me, Destiny, your screen is, oh God, it was crazy. You know, so I was so rough around the edges, but I had this partner.
01:01:24
Speaker
You know, she just, she basically took that bitch. She was like, you know, I trust this guy. Sometimes when he works with me, when he's taught, I just, it's just something, you know? And yeah, I started working with that. I got all of this. In a few months, I was able to solve all of those technical issues. I was, you know, I was.
01:01:40
Speaker
home and dry. And then I got right into the actual video stuff and I was able to catch up. I remember when I was leaving my firm, I had emails from partners telling me, you know, I would want you to understudy someone, you know, try to just groom someone, give me someone like you as you are leaving. I had emails from partners telling me, you know, you are special. And when I was starting, I couldn't have imagined those things because I was just making crazy mistakes. But the point I'm trying to make here is people can actually learn these things.
01:02:10
Speaker
if you put them in a position to learn those things. And I was very vocal about it. I would tell my partner, I don't exactly know how this thing will go. Let me go and do my homework. I was very vocal about it.
01:02:26
Speaker
They knew that I had a lot to learn and I had to build all of those stuff. And I was always kind enough to myself to tell myself, you know what, this has no bearing on your intelligence. You will get distance. You just don't know distance because you never had intentions. You were never in Legos. Some of your mates were already intending before they graduated. I did none of those things.
01:02:45
Speaker
You know, I was just coming fresh from Vinin, so I knew that I had to catch up and I knew that I still had a responsibility to do well on the job. So I had to put in the work and I was able to learn these things. I don't, I strongly feel, except the pacing maneuver their ways through that system, if the pacing goes through improper academic system.
01:03:06
Speaker
you can at least bet that they have something. They may not have it all, but they have a capacity to learn, right? Because that's all they've been doing. They just need to care enough about what they are doing. Because another problem may be, they're not so interested or motivated about the job. So they are not going to put in as much effort to learn, or they don't have the right people supervising them.
01:03:26
Speaker
I was fortunate to have all of these things. I was very motivated. I wanted that job. I wanted to impress and I wanted to prove myself. With all of that motivation, I learned everything. All the soft skills that I needed to learn. I'll tell my partner, you know what? Since you are going for this meeting, let me join you. Let me follow you and see the client. I was following my partners to see clients, even physically. Just listening to the way they spoke. I was speaking a lot of things by osmosis.
01:03:49
Speaker
And it worked. So the advice I have for people who like those things, and even for recruiters, the first goes for recruiters. Decide quickly and decisively. Do you want to take a bet on that? Because the truth is, if you do, you vary in most cases, and in at least eight out of 10 cases, you are going to get the dividends of it. Unless you find, maybe from your interview process, or maybe from other factors that they don't seem to be,
01:04:16
Speaker
especially motivated for the job. If they are really motivated and you give them a proper transitory ground to learn and integrate themselves into the work system, they are going to learn those things. All of those soft skills, put them in the environment where they can learn them. They will learn those things because that's who they are. That's what they've been doing. That's all they know. What they know is to learn. That's the whole point of being an intelligent person. And for the people who
01:04:43
Speaker
Ah, you know, maybe young associates are just studying work. What I should tell you is
01:04:49
Speaker
quickly on it, take accountability. Don't think that your job is just going to happen organically. Yes, it will. Some parts of it will happen organically. You can't let everything on the job in your first one month or even one year. But immediately take accountability and try to expedite the process. Because when you expedite the process, you get value. And the quicker you become valuable, the more you are respected within the structure.
01:05:15
Speaker
You already know your deficiencies. Don't lie to yourself. At least for me, I'm a very honest person. If I know that this is something I don't know, I immediately get to it and I start learning it. So when you come into a system, ask yourself, what are my deficiencies? Do I know how to use PowerPoint very well? If I got a task asking me to use PowerPoint, would I be able to do it? I had to learn that.
01:05:37
Speaker
Excel, learn these things. All of those things you can consider to be your deficiencies. Immediately get right into them. Don't wait. When I newly started BNI, the firm closes around six. I was living every day by 10, 11. I've been in the library, studying, because I wanted to cover for some of the things that I noticed.
01:05:58
Speaker
We didn't do at the law school, but it seems like everybody else knows it here. The partners are just talking about it randomly. I could see that gap. So I already took initiative. I'll go as I work. I'll study for like two hours before I go back home. I was doing that every single time. In five months of my NYC, I got an offer from the family. I didn't even finish NYC if I got an offer because I was already, you know, I'd already caught up and I was already providing good work to, you know, my partner. So that's always my advice.
01:06:25
Speaker
Don't lie to yourself. You know the things you are not good at. You've seen people write before. You may tell yourself, I don't think I write like this guy. This guy, the way he writes, he writes very well. Write more. The secret to learning how to write, writing.
01:06:40
Speaker
is just writing more. That's it. I was writing articles. I decided personally that I would start treating more in 2020 because I wanted to develop my writing skills. Many people don't know this. People would tell you, oh, you are talking too much online. You are too loud. But the truth is, I already am a very, what's the word? Intentional person. I cannot even think of one thing that I do that does not have a reason behind it. I can't even remember the last continuous nonsense I was doing. No.
01:07:09
Speaker
Most of the things I do, I have a reason behind it. My thought process in 2020 was, you don't have time anymore to write all these articles and all these papers I used to do, because now you are working. So the best thing you can do is use every opportunity you have to be growing yourself. Since you can't stop tweeting, but I knew I could not stop tweeting. Now, I started writing a lot of trades, and I started writing a lot of trades.
01:07:30
Speaker
You know, because the more you do it, you're getting too busy to understand. Yeah, you have something to say. But on the other hand, you're also grooming yourself to better articulate your thought processes, structure the way you write. I was learning a lot of these things in different ways from using different mechanisms, and they all paid off.
01:07:48
Speaker
every single thing that I plan for myself, they all paid off eventually. So my advice is just get right to it, be honest with yourself, identify your loopholes, start working on them, however, whatever means possible, and be very forthright with your partners.
01:08:05
Speaker
Don't micromanage these things. Tell them, you know what? I don't think I'm very good at it, but let me learn it. I will get back to you. Any decent supervisor is going to respect you for it because you are just a starter. Nobody's expecting you to know so much. At the end of the day, they know that
01:08:20
Speaker
What they really want from you is to be able to trust you and rely on you and say, okay, I have this thing I'm doing. I want to delegate to this person. And the only way you can view that sense of reliability is when they trust you. You know, you are taking accountability and you're very honest with them. And that's really just it. Give yourself that time and you will get it. Really and truly, you will get it.
01:08:41
Speaker
Destiny is indeed a really good writer. I can just spice it up. You should absolutely check out his Twitter if you haven't done that already. And when you were speaking, I think everything you said was 100% correct. And I also think I can add to that, that if you are on track to graduate with first class, or you've graduated with first class, but you appear to be struggling with the soft skills, just remember everything that Destiny has said. Be honest with yourself. Be kind to yourself.
01:09:11
Speaker
Remember that you were the one who graduated with that first class, which means naturally you're smart, you're resilient, you're hardworking, you learn fast. And so all of these should help you be confident enough to go into interviews and just let them know that, look, I'm good.
01:09:27
Speaker
and obviously you don't even need to like talk about the fact that oh you don't have the soft skills or anything because in the end you just need to be really confident in that interview your assessments your maybe um what's the um those reaching assessments and all those other things are probably corporate because you're naturally smart but you just need to come off as a very confident person and the HR guy might not even know that you're lacking in those other soft skills exactly exactly
01:09:54
Speaker
So thank you so much Destiny for that. So I think we've spoken a lot about law and every other
Application Strategies: Harvard, Oxford, and World Bank
01:10:00
Speaker
thing. Let's talk about Harvard and Oxford and your journey to securing admissions into those two prestigious colleges. So how did you do it and also what were the stages of the application process for both schools? Okay, I think
01:10:19
Speaker
These two screws are easy to apply to, contrary to what a lot of people think.
01:10:26
Speaker
They are easy. I didn't say it would be easy to get in, but they are easy to apply to. And some schools require a lot when you're applying. Some don't. One of those schools is Harvard. It's just that they have a very, very high standard in terms of what they are looking at. But in terms of the process, it's a very simple process. Simple in the sense that
01:10:50
Speaker
Some schools, for instance, will ask you to submit IELTS. I took that, but I eventually didn't need it because Hava doesn't need it. If you are coming from Nigeria, they are assuming you can speak English and it's fine. Oxford too. Oxford, they usually require it, but it could be waived. So I wrote a waiver and told them, look, I don't think I need to take this exam because I think I applied to Oxford first. Yeah. And I told them that
01:11:17
Speaker
And yeah, the wave did the idea, accepted the wave. So yeah, it's not...
01:11:22
Speaker
It's not the most stressful, but some schools will tell you you have to provide that. You have to do this and that and that. No, these two schools don't. It's just that for the program, I applied to Oxford. You can't get in if you don't have a first class. It's one of the major requirements. You just tell, you don't have a first class, just forget it. There is no need to apply. So that's why I said the process is not exactly difficult. It's just that they are specifics that they require. And if you don't fit into that category, it can be quite daunting to get in.
01:11:51
Speaker
I'll start with Oxford. The process requires you to write a personnel statement for sure. It requires you to submit your CV. It requires you to submit references from three to four either professionals or academics, but they lean more towards academics rather than, you know, professionals because, I mean, compared to let's say Harvard, Oxford is a very academic institution. They are
01:12:19
Speaker
very heavy on scholarship, basically. You have to be like a scholar. The professors need to say, oh, this person, they come with all the pump and pageantry of intellectual strength and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, they need to say all of those things. How about on the other hand, it's a bit more relaxed on the academic front there. They are a bit more eclectic if I should use that word. So you need to submit those references. Then you need to write a 1,500
01:12:48
Speaker
worded essay on law. You pick a legal area and write a proper essay. They want to see the way you actually argue. It's not just like
01:13:01
Speaker
It's not those 500 worded pages, all of this stuff. It has to be like a proper article where you make a very sound argument, use footnotes, use site references. Yeah, that's something you also have to submit for. So like I said, they are very scholarly. You need to know how to maneuver your way around that requirement because they would require you to provide evidence of that raw evidence like an essay that you wrote.
01:13:26
Speaker
How it requires that, but not to that extent. I think I just want you to write maybe somewhere around this 750 word essay on law. But it doesn't even have to be some legal topic, so to speak. I didn't write on a legal topic per se. I was writing about how I wrote on something a bit more complicated.
01:13:55
Speaker
how the World Bank gives loans to a lot of countries like Nigeria. And then many of these countries are able to bypass a very stringent condition that the World Bank imposes on those loans. So generally speaking, the World Bank is very happy to give you a loan as a country.
01:14:13
Speaker
and provided sometimes even without interest without interest payment provided you pay back and secondly provided you comply with what they call the RBROD general conditions which is which basically says that you cannot create securities over state-owned assets that would rank over and above the interest of the world bank so they are basically saying why would not ask for interest interest that a normal commercial bank would ask for if they were to give you a loan
01:14:40
Speaker
Don't create security over your assets. And the idea behind that is if you default, they have something to fall back to, something that will not be encumbered by, you know, prior security interest. They call it the negative pledge clause. Well, you know, I was basically explaining to Harvard that there are mechanisms in corporate practice that lawyers and, you know, countries use to bypass that condition.
01:15:05
Speaker
They go to other countries, they go to the Bahamas, they set up often XPVs. And I was trying to explain that we can use that procedure, we can apply it to the past sector in Nigeria.
01:15:19
Speaker
We can use it to deepen the current structure of that sector in terms of both lending and any of all of those processes that the World Bank goes through. It was a very technical, high-level corporate stuff, but that's how it does not require you to start writing about Section 144 of the Constitution, something so legalistic and not, it could be just something
01:15:45
Speaker
policy-based, right? But it has to make sense. It has to be, to some extent, I would say, just speaking from both my experience and speaking from the persons I've spoken with at Harvard, the graduate program, speaking from what I know, they prefer you to write something quite sophisticated.
01:16:06
Speaker
They're not going to tell you in that essay, no. But when you get into the school and you speak with those people, you know it's one of those inside out things. They will tell you that some persons literally solve mathematics inside their essay. I'm not kidding. Like people go crazy. They transform something on basic corporate law and they explain it in economic language or mathematical language or even calculus. People go that crazy. So the idea is Harvard is very impressed by
01:16:36
Speaker
the impression that the person behind this application is very, very sophisticated. There has to be some very smart person. They want to see that. They're not going to mention it. They're not going to read it on the website. But that's precisely how they eliminate the talent of other persons who apply. So it's an unspoken requirement.
01:16:55
Speaker
And then there's another portion of the Harvard essay where they expect you to write a personal statement, talking about yourself, your motivations for studying, and where you come from, what you do, why you've chosen Harvard, why you've chosen the area of interest. Those four things must be met.
01:17:14
Speaker
Oxford did not require that. Oxford wants you to write a 250-worded personnel statement. It's so literal. And the idea Oxford is communicating is that they don't care about you. They're not interested in your story. They are very academic-minded. That's where they first stood. You don't have your first class. Don't bother. They don't want to hear that all of these stories about how your house was on that bridge and there was an OS village and your parents died. They're not interested. It's just literally 200 words, you know?
01:17:44
Speaker
Harvard wants to see more of that because I think the key to getting admission to these schools is understanding what they need. This is how I think about application process every time I'm interested in anything. Recently, I applied to the World Bank to
01:18:05
Speaker
I applied to the World Bank and I remember the application was, I did it on the deadline. I just sat down, I was looking at the application, I was like, what am I going to write? Because they asked us to write, I'll go back to the awareness, don't worry, I've not forgotten, I just want to make an important digression. The World Bank asked that we write a one-thousand worded essay, right?
01:18:28
Speaker
they asked like two very complex questions. I knew the answers to those questions. I knew what I wanted to say. One was a blend of your experience. The other was, what would you advise the World Bank on giving these issues? What would be your advice to the World Bank as someone who has some level of experience in energy, for instance?
01:18:47
Speaker
I saw that and I asked myself the same question I always ask myself whenever I'm, you know, walking myself through an application or something. And it's very important that I see this here, because I'm calling, you know, caliber of presence who will be listening to it. Even in UNIBEN, it was part of what I used to do whenever I had an exam. The question I will ask myself is, what am I going to do that will make this application standard? Now, that's the easy question. The more difficult question is,
01:19:17
Speaker
How do you make anything stand out? There's an obvious answer. The obvious answer is if you are unique or what you have is unique, you stand out naturally. But there's a problem with that answer. And the problem is if a lot of persons like you are interested in something,
01:19:33
Speaker
The chance is that you have anything unique that you don't have very low. So which means don't count on anything. Don't think of it in terms of, I have this unique thing. Or maybe I'm a very fantastic writer. Maybe the rest are not. If you think of it that way, it will work. Because the truth is, when you are playing, especially at an international level, almost everything you have, someone else has it even more. So don't even think about uniqueness. The question you should ask yourself, and the question I ask myself is,
01:20:01
Speaker
What is more probable and what is the least probable with these applications? Now, these are the more difficult questions. Now, how do you assess what is more probable in an application? You look at the requirements. What did Harvard say we should do? Harvard has given you specific instructions. Say this, say this. It should not be more than this. It should not be more than this. Fine.
01:20:24
Speaker
Now, if there is a standard that is set, you can at least bet that a sizable amount of people will not go beyond that standard. It is just human nature. It is not because they are not smart. It's not because they are not anything. But you can almost safely bet that many persons will never stress themselves beyond the standard already provided. This is where a lot of students get Bs and Cs, where some persons get As. And I always tell people when they are going to the law school,
01:20:50
Speaker
Don't judge the criteria for getting A's by past questions. That was how they answered it in the past question. If I just write that, I should get my A's. No, when you do that, you don't really understand how these things work. It is a human being that is going to mark that script.
01:21:08
Speaker
This human being marking the script did not tell you that what you read in the past question was his own standard. Now, even if that person does not have a standard, the person can reasonably appreciate a very, very good standard when he sees one, which means if you write what is in the past question, what makes you think that answer is unique? You had access to that past question, yes. 7,000 other persons had access to that past question, which means if you are writing that, a lot of persons are also writing it.
01:21:35
Speaker
then the person who does something better is obviously going to be more favorably considered than whatever it is you are doing. That person may not have used the past question. That person probably just thought, hmm, let me improve on what's in the past question. And that's how people get ease.
01:21:52
Speaker
If I was like in uni-ben law school, that was my thinking. I want to write an exam. I remember my final year when I decided my final year that I was going to make a 5.0 because I wanted to see my first class lock, stock, and barrier.
01:22:08
Speaker
You know, people will tell you, oh, you don't get A in your experience. You don't get A in company law. It's so hard. All of those stuff that they say. I look at the class. I've known these people for five years. What is the most probable answer any of these persons will provide to a question on this?
01:22:25
Speaker
I know the most probable answer because I know the way many, at least the smartest people in my cloud, I knew the way they were thinking. I knew the ones that were probably too lazy to go, the extra man. I can reasonably approximate what is most probable. So my thinking is how do you improve on what is the most probable? I almost always find an improvement.
01:22:46
Speaker
In my final year, what I was doing was, if I want to narrate a Jewish credential, if I want to make a Jewish credential analysis, every time I want to refer to, let's say, a case, I will cite the case, I will cite the year, I will cite the law report, I will go. I knew that a lot of person and then why even going to do that? And the idea is not just to get the answers right.
01:23:08
Speaker
The idea behind getting a good grade is that you impressed the patient who was marking. That is that simple. The question of what I am intelligent is not the most relevant way. A lot of patients are intelligent and it will be obvious from the answer. You're not the only person who will get your answer correctly.
01:23:23
Speaker
But the question of who would most impress the lecturer is not very obvious. And you need to find ways to impress the lecturer. So I would look for different ways. Sometimes I would opt on the IRAC system. Instead of starting with issue, rule, application, I would start my conclusion. I would state my conclusion and then I would start applying
01:23:42
Speaker
As I explained why I reached that conclusion, some professors loved it. I tried it in landlord. I was the only person who had an AMI landlord. And I think the professor was blown away by the strategy. The point I'm trying to make here is it's not a question of uniqueness. I mean, maybe your ability to think of these things makes you unique, but that's not the point. It's not a question of having something unique that the other persons don't have. It's just a question of thinking harder. When I was applying to Harvard, I asked myself, which
01:24:12
Speaker
First of all, I know that Harvard is going to pick someone from Nigeria. That's for certain. So I'm not competing against the world, no. I'm competing against fellow Nigerians. Because even if everybody in other places, they do so well, there's a quota for Nigeria, right? Now the question is,
01:24:29
Speaker
What is the most probable kind of application anybody would give in Nigeria? I don't know everybody from Nigeria. I'm not going to presume that maybe I'm smarter or I ride better. No, I'm not making any presumptions. But I can safely guess what is most probable. I just have to look at the instruction. This is what Harvard said. Now, knowing Nigerians, what are the likely set of persons who will be applying from your level? Just look at your level two years before. I look at all of those things.
01:24:59
Speaker
They may be able to do this, but they may not be thinking about this. So the first thing I did was to select an essay that was completely esoteric. What I wrote on, I knew it would take a divine sense of serendipity for someone else to even be thinking in that angle. The other person can have something unique, but me, I know what I wrote was completely esoteric. So I did that.
01:25:25
Speaker
If it impresses them, I already stand out immediately. That's the idea. So I had to, because I had some other simpler essays where I was like, if you use these essays, what is only the same thing? You want to write on ESG. And last year, many of the patients who applied the same media essays, and I was saying,
01:25:42
Speaker
So I was seeing how these topics were cross-pollinating themselves. This person is talking about how to stop climate action in Nigeria. The other person is saying it from a different angle. Why is it the same thing? Everybody wants to stop climate problems, blah, blah, blah.
01:25:58
Speaker
Nothing is unique about this, right? So if any of these persons just think a bit further and say, let me think of this further, is this more like, is this most probable to be written by someone else? They would have gotten the answer. But I was always thinking in that line, this essay that I've chosen, what is the chance that someone else is even thinking about this era? My answer was next to nothing, very little chance. So how about wants you to be sophisticated?
01:26:27
Speaker
They want you to be unique too. And I knew this when I got into Harvard. All the essays, the Africans that wrote, they were touching different things that I could not have even imagined. I had a friend who wrote about derivatives. I was like, why did you even think about derivatives? But the answer was obvious, because that was also what I was thinking.
01:26:45
Speaker
You know, the idea here is you must learn how to eliminate competition. It's a very important skill in your career progression because in many ways you'll be dealing with so many people. So you need to be asking the right questions. The question is, what is the least and the most probable?
01:27:02
Speaker
You are not going to get a 100% foolproof answer to each of these questions because you don't know what the rest person is applying. But you can use certain parameters to judge what would be the average. What is most likely going to be the average? Then you now know you are dealing with a smaller set of persons. You have
01:27:19
Speaker
incrementally put yourself in a position where you are more likely than less likely to get what you want. So when I started, I was looking at my World Bank, I was like, you know what? I'm going to say something that I'm very sure if anybody who says this, you have to be crazy person. So I just I took a very unconventional approach.
01:27:39
Speaker
submitted it, the next week, they reached out to me like, we wanted to submit references, you know, you pass the first stage, submit the references, references were found, called me for the interviews, you know, I did the interviews. So the idea here is, if you want to apply to top schools, you can't just, you can't put a lazy application, it's, the battle is more mentored on physical, according to Napoleon Bonaparte, the life is, you know,
01:28:06
Speaker
is two times more mental than it is physical. And it's really true. You need to think the way the smartest person you can think of is thinking. Like you are going to a school where they are probably taking the best people from their classes, their countries, you know. So if all of these persons apply, what makes you think your application is going to be unique? So you need to think harder and further. And one benefit to
01:28:31
Speaker
Nigerians thinking this way is this. Most persons from other countries like Europe or whatever, they are not as hungry for these things as we are.
01:28:41
Speaker
So even if they are smarter than you, they are probably not putting as much effort into the thinking process. They probably just think, I'm just going to sit down, write something that is good, and push it out. Because even if they don't get it, they're not going to be killing themselves. They have other things that they are doing. But you are hungry about it. That hunger should necessarily just drive you to want to think harder and smarter, right? And if you do, you're going to come up with something sophisticated.
01:29:06
Speaker
something at least close to being unique even if it's not totally unique and then you now begin to work on the final details of how do you structure it how do you write it but the the the major part is what i just explained and let me tell you one thing i learned from how about again
01:29:22
Speaker
something that they really emphasized when we got there, when they were speaking to us about how they selected these applications. They told us that, look, one thing that many persons feel to do is they don't tell their story. And what that means is, if Harvard is reading your application, they want to be certain that as they drop the application, they can summarize you in one or two sentences and be spot on. So what does that tell you? The information in your CV,
01:29:52
Speaker
all your essays, everything must present one coherent story. You know, just one story. If you say that all your life, you have always loved energy. You have always been passionate about energy. This is what you want to solve. This is why you're coming to Harvard. And then in your CV, all the extracurricular activities you've done, they are related to something else. They have no connection with energy. You do not do anything related. If someone is reading it from Harvard, they're like, this doesn't add up.
01:30:21
Speaker
OK, if you tell us in this essay, for all we know, you might just be lying in this essay. We can't verify an essay, right, because we don't know you. But in your CV, it appears that every single thing you've done has been more litigation oriented.
01:30:36
Speaker
It has not shown any interest in the corporate law. You now seem to be gushing over here in your application. If there is any mismatch, they are most likely not going to consider it. The things you select and put in your CV, the kind of things that your referees are going to talk about
01:30:54
Speaker
what your essays will contain, they have to present a very coherent story of who this person is. Then in addition to that story, then they look at your academic background, they look at your volunteering services, the things that you've done so far.
01:31:11
Speaker
They told us that the idea for Harvard is they want to be able to look at this person and feel lucky to have you. And that was just what CEO did for me. And that's what I tell anybody that is interested in applying. Are they going to look at everything and feel lucky? Why do they feel lucky? They feel lucky because when they look at you and all that you've done, the kind of person you are, they are placing their bets on your future, knowing that if this person turns out to be so and so and so,
01:31:38
Speaker
That person is going to be called the Harvard alumnus. That's the way that they are thinking about the application. So once they're able to get that, ah, you have a very strong chance. You have a very, very strong chance. The applications are similar. They require the same set of documents, personal essays, legal essays, your CVs, and references. That's what you need to apply.
01:31:59
Speaker
but of course it needs a lot of ideation, a lot of strategy, trying to eliminate people who are also applying, you know, a lot of brushing up of your CV, trying to put the relevant things that fit into the story that you are telling. And then a lot of people have to look through those essays to remove certain words, put words that are more attuned to the American system or the British system, depending on which school you're applying to. So that's
01:32:25
Speaker
I think that was just a summary of what the application process entails and requires, at least at a higher level, from a higher level perspective.
01:32:36
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you so much, Destiny. That was really comprehensive. My next question was going to be the tips for people considering application into these schools, but I think you've covered it all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Any other tips? Any tip anybody asks me for? They probably should just come and pull out my brain. I don't know how else I'm going to explain that one.
01:32:58
Speaker
Exactly, you really covered the field there and it was really, really insightful. I mean, I was just taking notes as you were speaking, making sure you eliminate competition, have a coherent application, make sure that your story
01:33:15
Speaker
tells who you are, let's hover the Oxford or whatever school you're applying to feel lucky to have you when they read your application. And of course, have other people review your application. Exactly. You might think your application is the best thing ever, but it's always helpful when someone else... Yeah. And one more thing, in terms of the persons who make references for you,
01:33:37
Speaker
Choose the persons that know you best. You don't have to be the person with the biggest degrees. When I applied to Harvard, I used one professor, one academic with a doctoral degree. Then the other two persons were just lecturers, but they knew me best.
01:34:00
Speaker
their persons went to competitions with the way they wrote it, they poured their heart into it. And these people are not stupid. They know that you can just randomly meet someone who has some clout in your country and then tell them to write something for you. No, they know that. And they don't want that. They want someone who can say something meaningful, something that portrays a connection. They really actually worked with you. They knew you.
01:34:24
Speaker
It's not just some random person who I taught this person environmental law. I think the person is a great fit. No, anything generic, you are off. So make sure you choose the right people, people who actually know you. And also one who wrote, who used one person that was a mutra to both of us. We all finished from the same. We finished in the same set.
01:34:50
Speaker
He walked with that person, they walked together and that person wrote one of his references, you know, and he got into Oxford. These are things that persons, normally they wouldn't try because they were like, why would I use someone that I know? You know, there are persons who, who are probably, me and my friends are planning to have, I'd be like, why would this need my references to him? You know, and I'm very happy about that, because I don't want to be writing my rallies, not for the next five years, because how do you have that strength? I don't know anybody, I mean nobody, please.
01:35:20
Speaker
But the idea I'm trying to pass across is the focus more on the connection that is communicated in the reference than just the caliber of the person writing the reference. So you must also get that right, too. But then how do you reconcile this? Because I've had friends who have had to apply into graduate schools. And when they meet these lecturers, even, OK, first of all, my first question is, a lot of Nigerian students don't have that kind of relationship with lecturers.
01:35:49
Speaker
You know, lecturers don't even make it easy to be their friends at all. Yeah. And then there are some lecturers that when you meet them, the toy is righted by yourself and then you just like look at it and sign it and upload it or something. So like how do you reconcile that? This is a very good question and it's probably going to be the hardest question for me to answer because there's no immediate answer to it. I think it's just one of those things that's unfortunate in the process because if you don't know
01:36:19
Speaker
If you don't know any lecturer at all, they don't know you very well and you have to write something for them. First off, you can't lie because even if you do, they will remove it. If you tell very obviously that my professor and I, we went to the court one day, they'll take those things off because their reputation is at stake. They can't justify those things. So what I would do if I were in that situation would be
01:36:45
Speaker
You know, just draw a list. What are the passions that know you best professionally and academically? I would take the risk of leaning more professionally than academically. If the people that know me best are on the professional side, I'll take that risk because
01:37:02
Speaker
I've seen persons write brilliant applications. Like last year, I had friends who were on top of Harvard. I was hoping that my guys would be able to deliver three persons. Unfortunately, we were only able to deliver one, so we are waiting for next year to deliver the others. But these applications were very good. But one problem that at least two of my friends had
01:37:30
Speaker
I very much suspect that their references were shallow. Due to no fault of theirs, but the persons who wrote those references had basically nothing to say. So we are recalibrating the strategy. And the strategy is, you've been working. You obviously know more persons on the professional side. Lean towards that.
01:37:49
Speaker
Yes, they may want to see more academics, but the truth is, what if you don't have that? They obviously have preempted that externality. And because they preempted it, if they read a good essay from professionals who are speaking very well of you, that covers better compared to an essay that is just so generic. The truth is these people are not the people who even access these things. Some of them are non-lawyer. Some of them are psychometrics.
01:38:11
Speaker
They are trained to assess the veracity of these things from those documents. Even me, that is not a documentary. There are some references that are like, this person just wrote this thing because he had to write something. There is nothing here, right? It's not even up to a page. If I see that I'm not going to count it, it's not going to count for much compared to someone who is paid to do that job. They are literally paid to eliminate people in a process that requires thousands of people. There's very little chance. So I guess
01:38:41
Speaker
It's quite unlikely that you will be applying to grad school and not have people on either side. You are more likely to have at least on maybe the professional side compared to the academic side. You would have worked or you know some professionals who can really say some brilliant stuff about you. They may not be in your firm, they may be working in a workplace, but they know you. You probably don't stop before, right?
01:39:05
Speaker
they can say something. If you are woefully lacking on both sides, maybe you should start doing something because that's the only way we can transfer that into the reference because if you feel like you don't have on either sides,
01:39:20
Speaker
You can begin to volunteer. Maybe you are planning to apply to Harvard in the next application circle. You still have some months. Reach out to your professors. Is there any research I could help you with? Is there anything I could help you with? You'll be stunned. Some of them will get ejected, but it doesn't matter. They'll obviously like to give you stuff to do. Reach out to some professionals, work with people, right?
01:39:39
Speaker
work with people and they'll be more than happy to say stuff about you in those references. And I think that's really how you build that connection. The person who wrote, the doctor who wrote one of my references, no, she wrote both for Harvard and Oxford. She was my LLB supervisor. After LLB worked together, we published two articles in the UN journal together
01:40:04
Speaker
We went to the International Water Resources Association conference together. So we did a lot of stuff. And two of those things, she doesn't know. They were very strategic. But by the time I knew that I was going to apply the next year, I reached out to her. I was going to help her with these two things. And she was so happy to pour them in the reference. But of course, that's all she's going to say. That's what she knows. That's what we did, right?
01:40:29
Speaker
If you are lacking on both sides, then the obvious answer for me would be to go back to the drawing board and re-strategize and then begin to think, you know, start having a more forward-looking approach to the whole application process. Because the truth is,
01:40:44
Speaker
they rely more on the references than your personal statement. Because you can lie on your personal statement. There is no dignity to it. You are not stamping it. There is no letterhead to it. But they know that for references, at the very least, a professor will have some shame to just be telling blatant lies in the reference because his name is on the line, right? So they place a lot of reliance on it. I made sure that the persons I selected
01:41:08
Speaker
they'll be a spot on. It was two, three pages of references. They had a lot to say. So if you don't have that, then as unfortunate as it is, or maybe even blunt as it is, you are probably not ready for that application circle. Go back to the drawing board and try to build that so that something can get into those references. Otherwise, you stand the risk of losing on the swings, or you ought to have gained on the roundabouts. I think that's the best way I can put it.
01:41:41
Speaker
Thank you so much. So I'm aware that you got both Oxford and Harvard. Congratulations. What influenced your decision to choose Harvard? Two things.
Harvard Experience: Challenges and Opportunities
01:41:54
Speaker
The more presumptuous answer would just be Harvard is Harvard. But another good reason was, for Oxford, when you apply to Oxford, you have to separately apply for scholarship.
01:42:07
Speaker
I separately applied for the Wetheringfield Hoffman Scholarship and I got it thankfully, but it wasn't full. I had to go for interviews. They didn't give me the full amount. I think it was about somewhere around neighborhood of 50, 60%. I still needed to raise a chunk of money. But for Harvard, when you apply to Harvard, the scholarship application is baked into the application itself. You just have to fill in some forms here and there
01:42:37
Speaker
It's not anything requiring you to write an essay or whatnot. No. The thinking for Harvard is if you get the admission.
01:42:46
Speaker
Money should not be the reason you can't come. That's the way Harvard is thinking. That's why I said they told us personally that the way they look at you when it pick you is they are lucky to have you. They are already thinking 10, 20 years this person, it doesn't look positioned to become maybe the president of their country or something. They come up with all of this, maybe even delusional stuff, but they come up with them anyway.
01:43:10
Speaker
So, when you say, oh, money is the reason you can't make it, no. That's not an excuse that will fly with them. They will provide that grant for you. I've met persons that they provided full scholarship for, you know. And I looked at them and I have an application. They give me like 98%. I'm like, what am I? There's nothing to think about. I don't have anything to worry about. All the money that I had saved, I turned them to dollars. I was using them for other things, you know.
01:43:36
Speaker
So it was just a very easy decision, probably easiest, the easiest dilemma I've had that made sense. It was a very easy decision for me, but I plan to eventually go back to Oxford. But maybe that would not be an excuse to leave work for some time. By the time work starts killing me. I said, ah, and I'm not going there to get the logic. I'm just going to study some of that in like policy or philosophy. I would think of it as,
01:44:06
Speaker
the final capstone to my academic journey, just for refinement, not even for knowledge, not for anything. I'm just going to do it for the fun of it. Yeah. At the time, I'm poised to do that. Interesting. I mean, I shouldn't have asked that because why Harvard? Because it's Harvard. Period. Good win.
01:44:31
Speaker
But yeah, I appreciate that we are way past the scheduled time for this podcast, but I still have a couple of questions for you if you can stay on for a few more minutes. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. I'm already here. Let me just get it over with. Yeah, what was the best part about studying at Harvard? Ah, the best part. The best part is ironically the worst part.
01:45:01
Speaker
No, I don't think so. But I think the best part for me was the newness of everything. It's a different system. You are playing at a different level. Everything is just different.
01:45:15
Speaker
Sorry, can I interrupt you? I saw a video today. It was like all these Instagram skits. Somebody said my first time in Harvard as an Nigerian. And then the professor was asking 2 plus 2. And then the professor said 4. And then professor said no. The answer is gender equality. That's what he said in unison. I just remember that video. I see the connection.
01:45:46
Speaker
That was funny. But yeah, that was it. Everything was new and new in a good and a bad way at the same time. I'll give you examples to make it more relatable. Harvard is a place where maybe this is true for other Ivy Leagues. I don't know. It probably will be true because the American educational system is so well put together that what you get in a place like maybe Harvard, you probably get it in a Cornell or Stanford as well. But I can only speak for Harvard because that's where I've been.
01:46:15
Speaker
First off, the assumptions, the basic assumptions that they make of the students is just so mind-boggling. The professors assume that first you are exceptional. So I use the word basic assumptions deliberately because it's not even an assumption that is discussed. It is so presupposed that nobody even raises it up. Let me give you examples. A professor comes to class and
01:46:42
Speaker
He tells you, we have a course, we have a class, maybe tomorrow, and we expect everybody to study for this class. And he sends you materials. The materials he's sending is like 300 pages.
01:46:54
Speaker
Nobody is raising the question of, ah, is that not a lot of pages to study for one class? No. The assumption is you can read these things with the speed of light. And I found it ridiculous. Like, how are we supposed to be reading this much just for class? And we'll be doing this again and again and again. It was just crazy to me. But even when we started taking exams, it made sense to me because when they set the exams at Harvard,
01:47:16
Speaker
That's the same way that they expect you to run through the questions and get the answers precisely. They don't discuss it because they just so basically assume that everybody should be able to do that. We are not taught this way back home, so it was a completely different system. To give you a simple example, I took one exam during the fall. That exam was an eight-hour exam.
01:47:39
Speaker
You're C.W. You're typing your life out of it hours, you know. That the entire it hour period was not even enough. The amount of information that was expected in the exam, it was just so much that I was even more like, even if it is a very long time for an exam.
01:48:02
Speaker
Then I took another exam in January during the J10. The question sheet alone was 27 pages. We're not even talking about, we've not been answering the question. Just the question paper was 27 pages.
01:48:17
Speaker
And the time delegated to read through that question is some crazy amount of minutes. The speed in terms of processing information, the accuracy and precision in the way you deliver answers was just off the charts.
01:48:33
Speaker
And you can tell that from the bank of previously answered questions that some students, as well as students who had very top grades. So I was like, okay, fine, I'm here, I want to get top grades in my courses, I want to get honors. Because we have our grades, it's quite different from the way some of our school grades. So at Harvard, you don't exactly have a benchmark for a course.
01:48:56
Speaker
So, you know, in some schools, if you get 75, you get an A plus. How about those into that, a grade on a curve? So, which means your grading class is determined by the smallest people that are taking that course with you. If they take it up to 95, that becomes the H. Everything else becomes a P, and that is the way to grade it. Is that a H or a P, right? So, when I looked at the previous answers of persons who had taken those exams before, I could tell that
01:49:25
Speaker
The way they approach questions, answers, the expectation is what I was beginning to see, why they made those expectations. The students, they were just operating at a completely different level. It was another level of accuracy, intellectual brilliance, and all of that stuff. That was on the one hand. On the other hand, what made the Harvard experience particularly interesting for me was
01:49:53
Speaker
It's probably the only place where I felt the most free. I enjoyed my classes so much that I didn't even want some of those classes and not all but some of them because
01:50:07
Speaker
I felt, for the first time, I could share very crazy ideas and people would be like, I want to discuss the idea more with you. Professor would be like, I want to see you. I want to talk about that a lot more. If I miss a class, a professor would email me, I didn't see you in class today. You know, I felt really, really appreciated, much more appreciated than I think I felt in any other academic environment. So because in university, I was always my co-manager myself. That professor, if they notice you, that first class, you won't make it.
01:50:35
Speaker
and all of those crazy things. But here, it was just the support I got from lecturers and students. That well-meaning belief in your intellectual capacity was just everybody saw themselves as, everybody saw everybody as capable.
01:50:50
Speaker
So nobody's looking at you with one eye when you are asking questions or talking too much. Everybody really wants to hear what you say. And even after that, people will meet you and be like, I want to discuss that point you raised for that. Can we just have coffee and talk about those things? It was just a completely different experience.
01:51:07
Speaker
That made it really worthwhile because most of the way, the bulk of the way I think about academic excellence revolves around a certain level of unconventionality and creativity. So it was an avenue where I could be that person. I literally wrote my LLM paper on an argument that had been lectured in class.
01:51:27
Speaker
We argued and argued, there was no stopping point. I told him, I'm going to write my paper on this and he agreed. And that was how we just moved with it. So it was just a completely different environment. I felt really, really, really supportive. There are days, of course, where you feel
01:51:43
Speaker
You feel so tiny and so smart, so slow, so stupid, because you are dealing with really, really, really, really smart people. And I don't care how smart you think you are. If you go to Harvard, you meet people who are just off the charts. They are literally off the charts. So yeah, that would be two things that made that experience really stand out from an academic standpoint. Of course, I got to meet new persons.
01:52:08
Speaker
from a cultural and social standpoint, yeah, it was fantastic. I met different people who I got, you know, I got enveloped in this web of perspectives from different places, you know, interact with the Germans and see, okay, some of the stereotypes you know about the Germans are actually true. You interact with the Japanese, you see that, oh yeah, when I say Japanese, don't come with it. That is actually true. You know, all of those things, it gives you exposure and perspective and
01:52:35
Speaker
you need perspective to be insightful, to be wise, to be sometimes to some extent even brilliant. So yeah from that standpoint I would say it was just beautiful and easy going, but from the academic standpoint the words I used to describe it would be unconventional, extremely brilliant and demanding, but very rewarding. That's how I would describe it.
01:52:59
Speaker
amazing, fantastic. But then what were some of the challenges you faced? Challenges, the first challenge I faced however was just getting used to the expectations. I wasn't used to, I wasn't used to, I mean I believe I read more just in the last year I've read more than I read in maybe even four or five years and I'm not even kidding. Like I had this particular course where
01:53:27
Speaker
It was conception of legal entities. That course, we had 12 classes across the semester, and for every single class, we were reading like 250 pages minimum. That's just one course, and I had a ton of what I called it. I had M&A, I had securities regulation, I had bankruptcy.
01:53:46
Speaker
The amount of reading at Harvard is literally insane. That's just the word to describe it. So I had a challenge, obviously, getting accustomed to that. And one of the reasons why it was hard to complain about it was because the assumption is so basic.
01:54:01
Speaker
It's not an assumption that the lecturers are making are coming to class. Hey, are the materials too many? Please tell me I can reduce them. No. You are struggling with them. But when you come to class and listen to people, you can't tell that they actually read it. They could not have made the point they just made it. They did not read it substantially. So you're like, oh, wow, this is probably just a me problem. So you go back and you struggle through. But eventually, it became much easier. It became much, much easier. What that does to you.
01:54:30
Speaker
as challenging as that process what are those to use that two things one is that it makes you feel okay well i probably have that capacity right there were courses i took i have had that if i did not go to have it i probably would never have done those things in my life i took a course in corporate finance where i started learning calculus i the last time i did anything mathematics was secondary school i went back to youtube i was learning mathematical calculations you know so
01:54:58
Speaker
ordinarily I never thought I would do any of that stuff and the lecturer would come to class he would talk about corporate law to some extent for you know he would just start calculating the guy was insane he loved those things so he pushed me to a certain level where I would not otherwise have been pushed to
01:55:16
Speaker
So it does that to you. So you get some level of confidence that, yeah, well, at least you can compete favorably in professional academic settings. But the other thing it does to you is that it literally just breaks. It breaks you. It can be very terrible in the sense that if you are not careful, you start to really doubt yourself. You lose your confidence.
01:55:36
Speaker
And that really affected me because ordinarily I'm a very confident person, but I started to see that, and that just comes with more learning. The more you learn, the more ignorant and foolish you feel. It just felt like, by the time I was living in Harvard, I just felt like,
01:55:51
Speaker
I just feel very stupid. I was even retrospecting to some of the things I would say before now or things I would do before now. I can't just do them anymore. They just feel so stupid. They feel so arrogant. I can't even place myself in that pool. Something I would easily just brazenly do more. I guess it comes with maybe more and more learning just being around us. But it can be very devastating. It can affect you a lot. It can make you question your
01:56:17
Speaker
you know, your level of intellect, your self-confidence. I was having heiches in my crosses back to back, but I could not even celebrate them. I was telling my friend who just got into heaven.
01:56:27
Speaker
Because when he did orientation and they explained everything to him, he came back and he was like, guy. So all those ages you got, they were really difficult. I was like, yes, they were actually very difficult to get, you know. I had ages, I haven't had a Dean's Scholar in bankruptcy, which is, which basically is the prize you get for being the best student in the entire class.
01:56:49
Speaker
I think it was that when you celebrate you didn't say anything about it you just to those in the was a group and just that is that I was right because no mommy. I would talk about it I would write it maybe an excitement I would just I would not even see a problem with you but now I can't even do that because.
01:57:08
Speaker
I'm like, yes, you did that, but at the same time you struggled. You're probably not, you're not even, you're probably not the smartest person in that class. Like if they shuffle the class and put some other smart people, because it's on the curve, you probably not get it. So what's the point in celebrating that? It's not like the whole avatar took the course, but these are things I would never have thought of before now. It would just be like, oh yeah, I was the best in this class. And I would just say it, right? But I could not even say that I could not celebrate it. So I guess the point I'm trying to make is,
01:57:35
Speaker
Harvard makes you with the very same weight and in the very same measure that it breaks you. It creates a balance. The balance is when you are living in Harvard, you are a lot more humble.
01:57:48
Speaker
because you know that you don't even know a lot of things. You have seen people, you have seen stuff. There are people who know so much. And they're also thinking of that too, because there were some causes they took and they thought that they would probably get hitches, that they got peace, that they're like, as smart as I am, I didn't get it. So it happens to everybody. Everybody's watching their backs and like, yo, this person is probably smarter than I am, right? But at the same time, they know that they are capable. They just don't feel the need to.
01:58:14
Speaker
put it out there anymore because they also know at the same time that there are a lot of other patients out there who are much better than they are. So it creates a level of assurance and humility at the same time. I think this is the first time that I'll speak with someone who studied at Harvard and really like get a feel of the regard that it takes to study in Harvard. I just appreciate the depth of
01:58:43
Speaker
explanation that you and the time you took to, you know, put everything into context.
Memoir Insights: Destiny’s Storytelling Journey
01:58:48
Speaker
So I think the best notes to end this podcast on will be to talk about your memoir. Okay. First of all, what's the title? I haven't given it the title yet. Okay.
01:59:01
Speaker
Becoming Destiny, I'm giving you. No, no, no. None of that. None of that. My problem is probably things I should do that, but I do that now. Beneath the iceberg. I'm just thinking of ideas now. Okay, that's a nice one, but I don't want to do anything cheeky. It's just going to be some simple stuff, you know. Okay. If it was possible to even use an aliyah, so people would not know I was the one that wrote it, I would do so, but...
01:59:27
Speaker
That's not necessary. Possible. It's also an idea. Well, of course, people know me as possible. Probably even more than you invested in. No, so that would be the title, possible. I mean, anyone can write that. They won't know it's you until they see the... No, possible title. I'm just throwing ideas around anyway. I wonder...
01:59:51
Speaker
I would eventually come up with the title when I'm done. In my last chapter now, by the time I'm done, yeah, I would decide, I would decide, looking at everything put together, what's the best way to convey what the book is about? Then I'll do that. But yeah, let's talk about the book. What should we expect and when should we expect it? Okay. In terms of what you should expect, expect something a bit unconventional.
02:00:21
Speaker
OK, yeah, that's the word. And I say that because the approach I've taken to if I want to describe the book in one language, the word is raw. It's.
02:00:31
Speaker
It's just as I've been conversing with you. I just, everything, every chapter, everything I have to say, I just get right into it. No bullshitting. This is exactly what I think is exactly what happened. And this is how it, this is how it influenced me, this is how it impacted me. And this is what I think about more generally speaking.
02:00:51
Speaker
So it's unconventional on role. It's a very direct peek into my mind. It's a very direct peek into the insights that I have in a number of subjects. So the way that I structured it is every chapter discusses a major theme, a major aspect of not just me, but any person who has maybe a similar background. Just any random person you can think of. Like I said in the book, in the introduction,
02:01:22
Speaker
The book does not pretend that my experiences are unique. No, I have very similar experiences like most people. But what the book does is to take those ordinary experiences and make them strange to deepen them and provide the insight in those common experiences. But the idea is, yes, we all have these common experiences.
02:01:46
Speaker
You're not the only person who had a very tough upbringing. You're not the only person who has probably experienced all the things you've experienced from an academic or professional standpoint. But at the same time, I am trying to fish out some insights that people may not necessarily be thinking about when they are thinking about those experiences. So the idea is to take what is common and bring out what is uncommon out of it. So take what is ordinary and turn it into something strange, something
02:02:17
Speaker
something beyond the ordinary. That's the idea behind it. So all the chapters discussed, like I said, different aspects of my life. There's a chapter that entirely discourses my experiences with relationships, love, and all of that. And then the way I discuss every chapter is I will tell you what my experience has been.
02:02:39
Speaker
Then separately, in the same chapter, I then discuss the theme of that chapter. Based on these experiences, what exactly do I think love is? So I've left the point where I'm just telling you about my experiences. I'm not discussing the concept itself from a more objective standpoint. That's how I structured each of the chapters. There's a chapter where I talked about my background with religion and all of that stuff.
02:03:09
Speaker
And then in that same chapter, I discuss religion as a concept and its impact on society, especially in the Nigerian context. What do I think about Nigeria and religion? What do I think about Nigerian culture? What are the cultural aspects of my upbringing that I think
02:03:26
Speaker
has affected Nigeria and Nigerians and make them behave the way that they behave or do certain things in the way that they do those things. I relate that to different other aspects like academics, like governance, like politics. It's a book that has a lot of tendries. If you want to read an aspect of the book that discusses what I really think about the impact of culture on
02:03:49
Speaker
politics, for instance, you would find it. If you want to find an aspect that discusses what I really think about academics, what the academic system in Nigeria should look like, and why it should look like that, what are the things it is lacking, and what are the things you can do to make it a bit better, you know, you would find it. If you want to read the book, because you just want to see what I think about race, because there's a chapter on race, my experience is in the US,
02:04:16
Speaker
you know and how all of that relate to other aspects of the chapter you will find it if you want to read the book you are looking for a chapter that discusses what I really think about things like success things like you know career projections greatness in a more in a more professional setting my experience not just based off my experiences but based on observations and insights you find it if you are reading a book because you want to
02:04:41
Speaker
Maybe see what I think about love, relationships, and all of that. You're still going to find it. So it's a book that has just different aspects that in and of themselves stand independently, but put together, they communicate a central message, which is me. Yeah, that's the idea. I'm looking forward to reading it. Particularly, I'm interested in your take on religion, culture, and love, relationship, and all. So can't wait for you to drop in.
02:05:11
Speaker
Let us know once it is ready. By the end of the year, it will be off my table. I'll be giving it off to my editors. You'll have to go through the typos and stuff before it goes to the print. So that's the idea. Wow. That's very impressive. I mean, at your age, you're already like, that's all for me. That's like, you know, a very long term goal for me.
02:05:39
Speaker
But yeah, I'm really looking forward to reading it and I'm pretty sure our listeners are also looking forward to that as well. Okay, I appreciate that. Thank you so much, Destiny. We really appreciate your time on this podcast today. You, Destiny, have donated gems on this episode and I appreciate how real you have been with us on this podcast. Thank you. That's quite a compliment, so thank you.
02:06:04
Speaker
Thank you for the opportunity to, I think the things that we've discussed here today as random as some of them have been, they are very important for the persons who will be listening. I believe that at the very least there is one person who will listen and find it very either insightful or educative or at least informative. So yeah, thank you so much for the platform. You're welcome. So how can our listeners connect with you?
02:06:36
Speaker
My username on Twitter is MrPossible. It's a very simple search. Yeah. On LinkedIn, it's just my name, Destiny Ogelekwe. My Twitter and Instagram is the same, but I'd advise you follow me on Twitter because I really don't have a lot to give you on Instagram. I'm more of a writer, so I don't have those videos that people make on Snapchat, blinking your eyes like 40 bulbs. I don't have that. So I'd rather just follow me on Twitter and see what I have to say. That's it.
02:07:08
Speaker
I just had to laugh all out. Okay. It was really, really nice. We can read this today. Have a great day. Bye.