Mr Ibrahim, how come you write and speak so well? I wondered like the loading icon of a just booting phone. I have a story for that, I said.
Back in 2011, I took my first waec GCE. I was still in SS2 but my teachers were so sure I would ace it.
Got my A1 in math as usual but failed English. It came in different flavors of emotions from denial to realisation and finally to acceptance. That woke me up like a wounded tiger. As great as other results were in the 9 subjects, the result was as good as useless in my opinion.
Then in my secondary school, I had a friend called Olubi. He was born in the United States and is very good in english. Anytime the dictionary is not around. We would ask him to read the word. His pronunciation is the correct one by default.
He also took the GCE but failed all subjects except english which he had A1.
I walked up to him and said.. hello.. he said nice meeting you.. (often times I dont hear his accent).
You will teach me english, I will teach you math. We both agreed. We were both bitter but partners striving to pass the main WAEC.
He borrowed me books to read and corrected my essays many times. I will give him my jotter to check some questions I solved. Little by little, his accent began to make sense to me. I also found him funny and we laugh about our mistakes.
I also linked up with my english teacher then for random extra essay corrections after Olubi's inputs. My dad was also helpful in reading my informal and formal letters. No deal was signed but we were all partners like two elements on the far ends of the periodic table.
Fast forward to SS3, we took the WAEC again. As usual, Olubi had A1 in english, but this time, he passed his Math.
I had my A1 in math and Fmath and had a B3 in english.
That english grade was my least grade but it thought me the power of collaboration. At that stage I realised a chain is as strong as the weakest link in the chain. That partnership boosted the strength of my chain.
After that, I just read, write, speak and improve my english.
Since then, I realised no one is an island. When you fall short in an area, you reflect, link up with partners to boost you. Partnership is key and masters of partnerships are the real kings of the game..
To further improve my writing. I try to write even though am an engineer and a researcher. I dont like to send voicenotes because continious writing forces me to write and check the right tenses and bank of vocabularies and wealth of expression.
Why this story? As I look into the future, I could see more partnerships coming but the premise of my 1st Partnership is always with me. Find those that can help you and partner with them mutaully for growth.
Cheers
Ibrahim