Dealing with a helpless situation

Tough times never last, but tough people do ~ Robert H. Schuller

Life is full of ups and downs, yes we all know that but just knowing that never gets you prepared for when the tough times suddenly hit. My favorite quote of all time is "hoping for the best but expecting the worst" said by Mr. Hudson in his song with Jay Z titled "Young Forever". A lot of people always expect things to go well but me? I pray for things to go well and at the same time expect the worst because it gives me time to plan ahead and also to avoid disappointment.

But even at that, there were certain situations I never saw coming and even when I anticipated them, I was still overwhelmed when they happened. A lot of these situations happened when I was still in the university and from what I have read from other people's entries on this topic (especially Nigerians), their difficult times also happened at the university. This just tells you that life in the university is truly difficult but the way I see it, it's just a reflection of what real life truly is when you're on your own.

I don't even know which of my experiences I should talk about as each of them has different levels of crazy and difficulty. There was a time I was stranded in Lagos with my classmates when we were coming back from the institute we were posted to for our industrial training. It was during the petrol scarcity of 2022 and we couldn't get any public transport to take us home. We were stranded at the bus stop for over an hour before some of my female classmates managed to beg a truck driver to allow us to hitch a ride in the back of his truck.

But I guess I will just talk about the one that happened recently during my final year project. I already knew this project would cost a lot of money so during the first semester, I managed to save some money to help finance the project. I had over N160,000 ($160) saved up and I believed it would be enough for the project. The second semester finally arrived and I started the project. It was truly a difficult time for me and because of the nature of the experiment, I had to spend several nights in school.

I was very careful and paid so much attention to make sure things went well but when it was time to start seeing the result of the experiment, nothing positive came out of it. It was a fish breeding experiment and none of the incubated eggs hatched, except for the control group. I assumed I made a mistake during the fertilization stage but my supervisor thought otherwise and suggested I do another experiment but this time, I should reduce the duration of each treatment (it was a time-based experiment).

I agreed to do another phase of the experiment but the problem was I didn't have enough money to fully fund another phase and time was running out. I didn't know what to do at that point but eventually, I decided to borrow some money from my mom. I used all my money to do another experiment and was left with just N1000 ($1). The next day when the eggs were supposed to hatch, I saw the same result again: only the control group hatched.

At this point, I was defeated. A lot of things were going through my mind: "What if my supervisor asks me to still reduce the duration and do another experiment?", "how am I going to feed for the next couple of days?". On top of all these, I was also seriously sleep deprived and was only getting around 1 to 2 hours of sleep every night for over a week but still, I wasn't getting a positive result from the experiments which I have now done twice!

To make matters worse, my phone's charging port got bad during that period and I needed N3000 ($3) to fix it. Also, my monthly data subscription is about to expire in a couple of days and it costs N6000 (6$) to renew it, meanwhile I had only 1k. I was totally destabilized at that point and I didn't want to ask my mom for another loan because she was battling with my sister's fees who recently got admission into the university.

How did I cope?

First of all, my supervisor told me that there was no need to do another experiment because what I observed was also a result and that experiments don't always end positively. I was just glad that I was done with that aspect, but I was still faced with many problems that required money. I was in my room the next day using my other phone that wasn't working so well after my main phone went off because the battery died (remember I said the charging port is faulty).

I went through some money loan apps but was discouraged by their interest rates. Then I started checking my different bank accounts to see if I could scrap together some money and when I opened one of them, I met around N144k ($144) in it and I couldn't believe my eyes. "Did someone mistakenly send the money to me?", I asked myself because I wasn't expecting any money from anybody. Then I remembered something that happened 3 months earlier.

One of my friends sometimes uses my bank account to buy in-game coins and tokens for his business (he is a game merchant that sells in-game coins like PUBG UC, COD CP, etc). One of those transactions failed and my bank didn't reverse it, how much was it? N144K! I have been asking customer care to reverse the transaction for over 3 months, and now they finally did. The first thing that came to my mind was not to tell my friend about it and just use some of the money to solve my problems, and then I could just replace it later.

My conscious didn't agree with that and later on, I decided to just tell my friend about it. He was so happy and he told me to keep N15k for myself and send the rest of the money to him. Boom! I was instantly overjoyed. I immediately renewed my data subscription which was about to expire in a couple of hours and then the next day, I went to fix my phone's charging port. My only source of income in school was hive but during that period, I wasn't very active because of the workload of the project.

But since I was done with the project, I got active again and just had to manage the little money I got from my friend until I could get something from hive. That period was truly crazy for me and for the first time since I discovered hive back in 2021, I was very broke and helpless. All my savings went into my project which was still turning out to be a huge failure (or so I thought). But you know what? All my efforts eventually paid off and I got an A in my project!

Can I survive the same situation?

Probably not. Looking back, I only came out of that situation in a good way because of the 144k transaction that was reversed by my bank and my friend giving me 15k. Aside from that, I didn't really know what to do at that point and couldn't think of a way out of that predicament. It's a bit funny that something like that happened not less than 2 months ago but just yesterday, I went out to get pizza and ice cream for myself, something I would have considered a luxury a few months ago.

I will say I'm fairing quite well today. I'm not exactly rich but at least I can now afford to get pizza and renew my monthly data subscription with no stress. I finally graduated from the University after successfully defending my project (by the way, the external supervisor said I did a fantastic job 😉) and I even got an A, which was worth it after all the stress I went through.

Looking back, that period was very tough but I always told myself that there was definitely a way out of it, and thank God I got past that. I have been in a lot of difficult situations but I always came out of them in one way or the other because when there's life, there is hope, I have only truly lost when I die. I'm just remembering I haven't repaid the loan I took from my mom, at least she didn't find out about the pizza and ice cream 😂.

Thanks for reading

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