What do you do when you find yourself doing what you never imagined to do, ever!

 Hello reader,

I graduated this year on April 5. But, I entered the corporate world in October, 2022. What did I expect? To have a job or internship so easily because I was qualified. I still counted myself a student until graduation though. But still. I wrote my CVs and sent them to so many companies asking for an internship. The walks from one place to another where a whole different story. This one time, right after I submitted at one of the companies, it started raining and I didn’t have an umbrella. I just went to a nearby shelter to wait it out. Walking long distances wasn’t a big deal.

Fast forward to November. I am chilling with my family in the living room and my uncle says, ‘you should apply for an internship at PABE Construction as an Environmental health and safety (EHS) officer’. I am reluctant because though I am actively looking for an internship, I am scared of the idea of working. It rings so many expectations I thought I couldn’t meet and the kind of change I didn’t think I was ready for. But, I do it anyway. Days later, I get a call to go to their office and I am excited.

My excited self on my first day of work. Photo from unsplash by MI PHAM

It is roughly 8 or 9 am and I am at the office. Mulimakola? Tilimakola, kwali imwe? 'The HR was scanning my CV and she was asking how I was in Chitumbuka. I was more than delighted. Since you're applying for an internship, we won't do any interviews. But you start right away. This is the office…

It has been a year since then and let me tell you, I have learnt a lot. I could barely let out my voice in front of many people but now I can do it. But one thing that remains is that I do not like it. I don’t like being an EHS officer. I want something else. It is not what I imagined to be doing after finishing my final exams of college. If I am being frank, I would say I imagined I would be working with companies to ensure quality or manage the environment. I know, I do them here. But I just never accepted it in my heart. I was all over the place just wanting to work with water and wastewater. Ever since working on my final year project, where I was treating sewage. It's what I want to do. 

Image from unsplash by :IvelinRadkov

So, in as much as I have been the EHS officer for a year, I haven’t fully accepted it. I didn’t think I was capable in the first place and then again, I was determined to succeed at it. I also looked at it with foul eyes and I couldn't wait to get where I wanted which is well, anything water really.

But you already have a job, why don’t you learn to like it. I didn’t think I was going to be here this long. I am surprised that I am here. I really don’t know what I imagined. But now, I have decided to take it to heart that I have a job and I can get better at it and even come to love it. 

I know it is not what was on my wish list, but it could get me to my destination. Who knows. In one speech, Shonda Rhimes once said, 'if I am here, it is not a mistake. If you are in a room, it is not a mistake at all. If I am on stage, then I have to be here and deliver what is required of me than give excuses. I have got to stop acting as if it is a mistake and I shouldn’t be here or, people around me will start to think the same thing. That I don’t belong here and therefore I shouldn’t be'.

It isn’t easy to accept the truth in front of us sometimes. For me, that has been work, academic and personal stuff. I have been refusing that I am an EHS officer, a writer, I am very creative, a novice crochet lover, that I am smart in my own ways and mostly, that I don’t know everything and it is okay. 

I am still trying to accept what I have in front of me so that I stop looking at other people's lives wishing they were mine. The grass can be green here if I work on it. 

Until next,