An old friend once told me: “If you have come to university to get a degree and get a job, you are in the wrong place for the wrong reasons, darling. You need to come to university with the intention to broaden and sharpen your thinking capacity.” He shook my whole life’s purpose with that statement and our conversation that day stuck with me forever. Initially, I deemed him insane. I wondered about how I will feed my two daughters and help my struggling single mother as well as deal with “black tax” if I am not here to equip myself to get a job.

Recently, especially after graduating, I have come to a profound understanding of what he meant, and I have developed a deep appreciation for that statement. My concern with getting an education for the sake of being educated was with the ongoing plight of black lives in South Africa. How could anyone afford to come to university simply for the sake of knowledge? I labelled it selfish considering how we live in the legacy of marginalisation and subordination to date. Certainly, many black students want degrees for the financial gain. They all want a good job that pays well and I truly empathise, given the economic circumstances that 99.9% of us come from. However, the formula “degree = job” is a major miscalculation, as clearly demonstrated by the high rate of unemployment and the number of qualified youth sitting at home. This assumption is as good as setting ourselves up for failure. The depression and anxieties that come with unemployment will soon be our lifelong companions as we continue to internalise our family’s disappointment and those “we regret to inform you” emails from our numerous job applications.

Toni Morrison said, “Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” I realised my education was for my psychological empowerment and not a quick ticket to a job offer

Being educated has everything to do with you finding innovative ways, as well as creative ways, to solve your life’s challenges as a whole and almost nothing to do with being given a desk, laptop and being instructed to do certain tasks.  Education is for education’s sake – it is for knowledge, it is freedom from ignorance, it is finding ways to solve the problems you so desperately want to run from by getting a job and letting the plight be someone else’s problem. This is why it is so important to ensure that you love what you do and do what you love. If the good-paying job comes then great but chasing a “job” with a degree is a futile task. I have found it more rewarding to chase your dreams with a degree and exhaust your capacity to master your own thinking, as opposed to owning a degree and having someone think for/over you.  In today’s world we need people who can solve the many over-arching social problems, rather than to simply add on to the norm. 

The South African job economy proves itself a volatile space and in order to survive I’ve found that taking your education and branding yourself as an entity that can offer a service, a realistic and sustainable plan. Sharpen your specialised skills, make them unique to you and you will quickly find that to be the most effective way elevate financial struggles. This way you stand a chance to survive in the competitive market because you will soon realize that having a job is not enough. Young people need to think more about freelancing and taking active ownership of their careers rather than waiting for big companies to hire them.

Whichever way you look at it, you are still one in a million.