Open Letter to Students!!!

Take a minute and ponder on these names and what they signify

-          Oprah Winfrey

-          Aliko Dangote

-          Steven Spielberg

-          Olorode Michael Ibru

-          Bill Gates

The first thing that will come to your mind is wealth. If you are a bit more perceptive, you’ll probably think success and achievement. You’ll probably have also heard stories about how some of them began their ascent on the success ladder. You’ll most probably have missed one thing.

All these hugely successful people were once interns!

Yes, interns. That’s the equivalent of an IT student in Nigeria. Internship goes beyond industrial attachment even in Nigeria, but that description helps to begin understand what these people once were. Whilst industrial attachments appear to be forced upon students of tertiary institutions by schools curricula, internships can be entirely voluntary. Industrial attachments are meant to give students on-the-job experience to complement classroom experience; internships are essentially meant for this purpose too.

In her sophomore year at Tennessee State University, Oprah Winfrey, the richest black woman alive and talk-show host started out as an intern at a Nashville CBS affiliate – WTFV-TV before she got hired as a news anchor in 1973. Imagine it, Oprah Winfrey, the wide-eyed intern.

Imagine the first day you started something, and imagine how that thing has prepared you for where you are now.

Steven Spielberg, aged just 17, got an opportunity for an internship in the purchasing department of Universal Studios. Today (and for a while now), he is one of the most talented film directors that have lived on earth. If you have a rich imagination, you would probably have started imagining how the young Spielberg would wander around the studios, seeing things, asking questions, observing people on the job… learning. Yes, a process you cannot afford to skip if you want to be good at anything.

Nearer home, Olorode Michael Ibru, patriarch of the famously successful Ibru dynasty might appear to be, or indeed is a colossus now. Colossus, he wasn’t born as. After secondary school, bearing in mind the quality of education in those days, Olorode Michael Ibru began professional life as a management trainee on the books of United African Company (UAC). A management trainee is essentially an intern; trainee: subjected to training with a view to achieving organizational goals. He took this training to heart and mind, and when he veered off to pave his own path, he used these skills acquired as a trainee… as an intern.

Do you get the picture now? Final examples coming up.

Bill Gates, former richest man in the world (still may be again) spent a summer as a congressional page as a bright-eyed 17 year old. The budding entrepreneur sold outdated campaign buttons as collectors’ items. This was before Harvard, and definitely before the software behemoth called Microsoft. The internship probably helped hone his ability to organize and lead, as he was near so many leaders at such a young age.

Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man first had to garner enough experience as a lowly employee in his uncle’s company, and then, what do you know, he is a magnate to rival magnates today.

If anyone ever tells you experience is overrated, politely tell them where they might wish to go to peddle their opinions.

And to offer a platform to garner much-needed experience of the corporate world is where Sesewa comes in. Visit www.sesewa.org today and lay the solid foundation for a future leader in whatever sector.

Thank you.