Untalented Contest by @surpassinggoogle: Who am I?

After reading the thought-provoking article birthing the untalented contest by @surpassinggoogle. I decided to participate and provide answers to his question “who are you?”

I am still on the journey to discovering myself as I have always thought to myself, “who am I.” I thought it was my academic performances or the amount of wealth I accumulated. At some point, I thought it was my relationship status.
The beginning
I was born into an average Nigerian family and as the first child; a lot of responsibilities have been bestowed upon me. My parents have always wanted me to be better at school and to this; they always compare me to other successful students at school. I always felt sad and depressed deep down but this never showed up on the surface because I was easy going and always seemed happy.
As criticisms of not being the best at school increased, I lost my self-esteem and always sought validation from friends and colleagues. I later improved on my academics but not by competing with myself but with others. My parents later got divorced, and my life was never the same again.
The search

As I studied and made friends, my life became controlled by peer pressure. I am shy, but when I find myself in a comfortable environment, I loosen up, and I can be so much fun. Thus, many think I am coy. There was a time I couldn’t visit a bank or run errands because I so shy and I thought everyone was always looking at me and thinking I am not good enough.
I started my journey to self-discovery in my last year at secondary school and I thought to have loads of money was the way to knowing who I truly was. I chose my supposed career path on this premise. Unfortunately, as many undergraduates at Nigerian universities will say, “I didn’t get the course I want to study because I didn’t meet the cutoff.” I am also in the category of these students.
The Discovery
After this failure, I sat back and thought about who I was again. I thought about counseling, visiting a shrink but they are quite unavailable in this part of the world, or maybe I didn’t search enough. I got an offer subsequently to study a course that lead to the discovery of my who I was.
I study Medical Laboratory Science at the university which I got to fall in love with it, and I met people who encouraged me and gave me a lot of advice. In my sojourn to discovering myself, I met @destinysaid, @valchiz, @edumurphy et al, under the @africaunchained project that led me to steemit. All through these events, I eventually came to understand who I was.
I am an optimist as well as a pessimist so you can call me an “opemist.” I believe friends make up an essential part of an individual and one should know he/she is talented no matter what others say. Through my journey in life, I have learned that helping people is one of the best ways to be happy and fulfilled. You partake in healthy competition with individuals, but ultimately it is a competition with one’s self. Every single aspect of an person; their character, personality, and those little thoughts that stay inside makeup who they are.
The conclusion
I hope to be an academic someday and travel around the world impacting knowledge. I would love to help people find meaning to life, do research and find cures to some incurable diseases that we have today.
I am glad to be here on steemit and reading “surpassinggoole’s article. I hope to add benefit here on steemit, maybe become a whale like @ned and @dan and eventually continue to promote steemit and build a better and stronger brotherhood.