Hey lovelies! I was opportune to be a special guest at the She Can Nigeria Conference on Friday, which held at the Muson Centre, Onikan Lagos and it was a wonderful experience.
For those of you wondering how I can attend these different events whilst maintaining a full time job, I’ll give you a practical example. I got invited by Ezinne Ezeani, the founder of She Can Nigeria about 2 weeks ago, thanks to my friend Chinyere Ujor who told her about me (thank you boo!). I realized it was scheduled to hold just two days into my new rotation, which would mean it would be incredibly difficult to get permission. So, after much deliberation and prayers, I approached the doctor in charge of rotations ahead of resumption to ask for my unit. When I met my unit’s Senior Registrar, I offered to resume a day earlier than schedule, so as to make up for the day off on Friday – he told the consultant and he agreed! That’s how I got permit to miss work on Friday – I sacrificed a day of my leave and resumed into a 24 hour call duty day lol, but it was all for a good cause.
So now you see how I got the time to be there, let me tell you about it! The conference was basically a major women’s empowerment event, where women who have excelled against various odds shared their stories PRACTICALLY. I emphasized the practically because these women didn’t glaze over topics. For example my Chief Dr. Abolarinwa, who I worked under during my Urology rotation, is the first female consultant Urologist in Nigeria. She told us frankly about how she had to sacrifice her love for baking for medicine, she told us of how her own colleagues were her biggest contenders in her journey to qualifying, how she came from a well to-do family where she had to learn how to self-motivate herself as compared to the natural motivation that struggle provides – it was super enlightening and relatable for me.
Dr. Helen Paul, who is now the first Nigerian Stand up Comedian to hold a Doctorate Degree, gave us life lessons from the point of someone who grew up with little to no expectations from those around her – and this really re-emphasized the importance of self-motivation, just having that meeting with yourself where you decide what you want to achieve for yourself and make up your mind that you will make it happen, regardless of the challenges faced along the way.
There were lots of other speakers and they were impactful too but these two were my top two 🙂
I look forward to sharing my story on amazing platforms like this and I gotta commend Ezinne Ezeani for this amazing, amazing event!
Till next time,
Dr. ETP xo
