Fire! Fight! Flight!

By Angela Gait, 26, Johannesburg

The daily road taken to gaining perseverance and determination…

This isn’t an attempt at getting pity, or even understanding-it’s about the advantage of being a human packhorse and how far it can get you.

I started working when I was sixteen years old-Saturday mornings at a cycle shop and Sunday nights at a pizza place. This helped pay for some of my extra murals, but largely went to helping out around the house. Working at sixteen was as comfortable as sitting in the middle seat on an airplane with large ladies and screaming babies on either side of you. Painful but beneficial in learning patience. Dealing with large amounts of cash and learning to speak to customers gave me an advantage in the working world.

Having grown up in a fairly impoverished home with a single mother with depression, the concept of money or tertiary education was not an option. After graduating high school and deciding to be an artist – which, let’s be honest, was personally the worst career choice I could make, I then found my true love, Anthropology. Making mistakes and learning, was one of the main lessons during this time.

Fire!

Having found my true academic love, my next task was to find funding for this true love. I searched high and low. Eventually I realised that I would need to put this fire out myself. Or watch my dream go up in flames.

After initially being fired from a receptionist job, I found an au pairing job. It paid the bills and didn’t require much brain power, leaving time for studying in the morning and the evenings – perfect, you may think. However, as the winds of change came, so did new necessities. I was offered a job at a small start-up homeschool for a few peanuts a month. It helped to develop my teaching and teamwork skills. At the same time, I was tutoring in the early evenings and working as a cashier at a cycle shop on Saturday mornings. There was no chicken or beef option, I did what I had to, in order to stay afloat and get the funding I needed.

There were many fires in my journey. Working four jobs, having four bosses and being a perfectionist was enough to set a house alight. The biggest fire was the human emotional aspect. I forgot to give myself the grace that my bosses showed me every day. This created a bitterness in me and took a long time to overcome. It exasperated my anxiety levels. Anxiety that at the time I didn’t know I had.

Fight!

Having no surety for a student loan, I constructed my own surety by working four jobs. Each day would start at 07h00 and end at 20h00. That didn’t include studying. Eventually, the bank decided to give me a student loan and a car loan. Having a car maximized my time, taxis were now a thing of the past. Gratitude. That’s what catching taxis taught me.

I applied for my first year studying English and Anthropology through the University of South Africa. I fought my way through every module and exam while keeping my surety up. That being said, my life was never void of joy and fulfillment. With the support of my friends and family, I was able to walk away from my first year with a couple of distinctions. Support structures and people believing in you are often the most important part in completing an academic journey.

Every day was a fight, from dealing with lecturers that took days to reply, to fighting for marks and guidance, to battling the Johannesburg roads, trying to avoid road enraged people and lastly to be a human being. I was galloping at a ridiculous speed with the weight of work, studies and life. The key skills I learnt from this were patience, eating while you’re galloping, sleeping in flight mode, and realising that sometimes, for a season, there won’t be work life balance.

Flight!

When no one could reach me-not because I was sitting on a private plane, drinking expensive champagne; I was either sleeping, my phone had died at work or I was staring into my books. By the end of the day I was emotionally and physically exhausted. This is where I would sit in front of my books and study in flight. I wouldn’t be able to tell you how I did it, but my ‘fight’ training came in handy and I accomplished my academic goals in 3 years. Flight was also useful for eating, sleeping, and socialising. The lights were on but I was barely home some days.

What all of this taught me was that I am resilient. I am able to cope and today the craziness of being a packhorse has allowed me to gain an amazing work ethic that has taken me further than my means ever could. Today, I have an amazing degree that I truly enjoyed – and hope to keep on enjoying in Honours. Although, Anthropology may be viewed as not marketable, having fought my whole life, this is just another thing that I am willing to fight for. It has not been a short journey but one of long hills to run up and steep downhills to slide down and more to come. Horses are strong, and I am ready for the show horse part of my life, with work ethic that I can trust will take me far.