My Unstoppable Story

A Story by Moyinjoe

My #UnstoppableStory - Growing up, most children sometimes don't know what they want to be in future and I happened to fall into that category, after Junior Secondary School (JSS) class where you have to choose a class (Science, Commercial or Arts), which I believed will shape who you are and what you will become, I excelled and was given the opportunity to pick a class of my choice from the three option, I opted for the science class which I believe people expected me to be in as my Father was an Engineer and my brother was also a very popular sciencce student in school (now an Engineer also sha), after the first term of being in science class, I realised this wasn't for me, so I made a decision not to return the next term, so I called my father and told him I would like to speak with him, there I told him I would like to continue my secondary school as an Arts student, he was surprised but was also understanding, he asked if that's my choice and advised me that "whatever decision I take now will be with forever" and the next term, I returned to school as an art student, you know how hard it is - moving from science class to art class in the same school, rumors were flying, that maybe I had failed woefully and had to drop, different stories here and there, I explained to those who cared to listen that this is my choice. Fast forward to 2010, I graduated from secondary school as an art student, bagged the prize of the Best in Fine Arts student award with me. I was #unstoppable. When registering for my JAMB examination in 2011, I was faced with the dilemma of choosing a course of study, for some it comes easy but for me it wasn't, people's expectation of a successful art student is to either study Law or Mass Communication, of which I had no interest in both, then I chose Linguistics (partly because I love the way a friend of my brother speaks and talks about the course, secondly because of my love for languages and I thought we'll be taught a lot on that), I was admitted into the University of Ilorin that year as a Linguistics Student. In my second year in university, I took my time to do an in dept study of the course and what I'd like to be in the future based on it, there I found out about Speech Language Therapy and amazingly there is a related course which could give me an edge in Linguistics (Applied Linguistics), I was so happy, there I decided SLP, is the way forward but there was a problem as Linguistics in most part of the world focuses more on the grammatical analysis of languages, and your final projects are always based on one (A language). I decided that I was going to give it my best shot and work on A Speech Problem for my final project fully knowing that it's impossible with the trend of project topics allocated to students in my department, but I had a simple plan in mind: As soon as we resumed 300 level, I went to school on the first day which was unusual for a stalite (people have already matriculated and in their second year in school and above), I rushed down to meet with the then HOD of Linguistics who luckily was a Professor in Applied Linguistics, I explained my research to him, how I come to know about Speech Language Therapy and my interest in Autism and how I would like to work on it for my project, he told me he understood and would talk to those in charge when the time comes, but I knew in the span of one year before we were handed our topics, he would have changed his mind or forgot about me, but I was determined to never give up, first day of the second semester (same 300 level), I went back to his office, reintroduced myself, happily for me, he remembered me and reassured me that I'll be given the project. Come 400 level when we are to get our topics, I was given a project to research on the syntactic analysis of a language in Nigeria, I was shocked, so were others who were also given topics which were against the three projects title we were made to submit, almost everyone gave up and was determined to work on the topic given to them but not me, I had finished the project even before I started, read books on Speech Language Therapy, researched on Autism, read books, watched online videos, contacted some authors who are abroad, about giving me the right to use part of their books in my research; and now I was given a different topic? I rushed down to my HOD's office, reminded him of my past two meetings with him and how he promised that I'll be given the chance to work on the project of my choice, he apologized that I wasn't given the topic I had wanted and asked if I was still interested, then, he gave me blank note to write the Topic I wanted, he helped paraphrased it to the appropriate format and asked the secretary to produce a new updated list in which my project topic was changed to "Language Therapy for Autism Patients: A Case Study of UITH", I was so happy, this bold move of mine inspired so many others in my set that they also requested for a change in their topics and they were also given, this also inspired some students in the next set to pursue their dream projects and researches. After I had successfully completed the project amidst all challenges faced and graduated from the department, I was happy because I was #unstoppable. My #unstoppableStory is a continuous one but I have learnt to never backed down on my dreams. Thank you. I am Joshua Arowolo and this is my #unstoppableStory.