Working For Experience To Working For Passion and Getting Paid for it

 By Kalu Ndukwe

Doing work you don’t enjoy  so as to  get to the job you love, happens. It is a real thing.

As a professional, there are some jobs I’ve done, not because I loved the role, but because I needed the experience it offers. One of such jobs is  working as a nursery school teacher. This happened after graduating from high school [secondary school].

When  teaching kindergarten pupils, you  know by default that you’re dealing with persons who are not in any rush to learn your stuff and will never cooperate with you  unless you make learning a fun-full play for them. They won't understand you unless you keep your words simple and easy for them to understand, when teaching. When you don't do that, you’re on your own. 

Teaching those little humans made me to learn patience. It made me to get to learning how to make people cooperate with me. It made me to learn to speak clearly with simple easy to understand words. And I’m using that patience as  well as the ability to avoid big words. I try and  speak clearly. And the skill of getting people to get together and cooperate  comes handy  in my present commitment in business development because I work with teams.

Doing a task for experience, even if  I don't love doing it  doesn't involve paid jobs only. As a person who is passionate about entrepreneurship, there are some hustles I’ve ventured into, not because it was fun for me, but because I love to build my own business and doing a trade I didn’t love is  still business for me as long as it is  a necessary tool to learn about customers and get into the  business I love. 

One of such necessary hustles I did but did not enjoy was, hawking. The lessons learnt come handy in building Smatkaria.

The key thing is to find  happiness  and fulfilment, by following my   passion. And just as it is in my own case, following your passion may require doing things you don’t enjoy, if those things will help you to get to doing the things you love and enjoy doing.