CONFESSIONS OF A WORKING LADY!!!

Hey guys,

Sadly, the weekend is almost over. I hope you guys made it count? I actually had the cutest date yesterday, and though my fingers are seriously itching to share, I'd rather save you the long essay and focus on the subject matter of the day.

Two days ago, I received an email from a fellow blog reader saying he's been eagerly waiting for my next post. According to him, he's been following my blog for a while and seems to know that each time I haven't put up a post in some days, It's probably because I'm very occupied with work. Is this true? Hell yeah!!

You know yeah, this work life aint easy at all. It's not as it looks in films. I entered the working world officially in November 2014. I was fresh out of Otondo life (NYSC), having spent a year serving my country and preparing for my debut onto the bottom rung of the career ladder.

I was enthusiastic, excited and full of rose colored ideas about what working would be like. I mean, I had worked before, but it was only part-time jobs like care giving, tutoring, nursing, administration and summer jobs which were nothing like working full-time in an office professional setting for 340 days a year.

I remember during my student days how I always envied those who had moved from student life to working life. It just seemed like they had gone from the boring long lectures, projects and course works, all-nighters at the library, exams and all the crazy drama that came with uni, to living the good life. This is not to say that the work life isn't good, but I guess my expectations of it were a bit unrealistic, in the sense that there's more to owning an office diplomat desk, an executive chair, a desktop and a phone all in your office space.

Unlike the student life, there are some realistic realities I have encountered in the work life and they are as follows:

No such thing as summer holidays

There's no such thing as summer holidays where you force yourself to keep on working because a long break is coming up. Those month-long holidays will never happen again. You may only get a few days break. If you want to go on holiday, you have to book it out of the 25 days of annual leave you’ll have, and it’s unlikely you’ll ever get to take more than 10 days off in a row. More worse, there is no guarantee that you’ll get the whole of Easter or Christmas week off. In some jobs, you might even get roped in to work Christmas or Easter day.

You will not always rock heels and cool office clothes.

I remember when I started work newly, My vision of ‘working’ always entailed me looking like Anne Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada. I thought I’d wear stylish office clothes and want to wear heels every day. You can check out my walk in heels here. I literally had to learn to work in them heels at some point but it turns out heels hurt your feet if worn for too long, and when you have to leave your bed early in the morning, all you want to do is put on warm, comfortable clothes.

You begin to pay tax.

This hurt me real bad. I never really saw that coming..well not in Nigeria I guess. I’m still not really over it yet, even though I’ve now been paying income tax for the past 5 months now. Apparently this is a percentage of your salary you have to give back and it is high for high income earners and low for low income earners.

Responsibilities Increase

Just when you think the consolation for tax payment would be that, it is the only thing you might have to bother your self about, being that you still live in your parents house and don't have to bother about rent or food, You find that you still have to contribute to the family in one way or the other. For me, I buy food stuffs, contribute in rent payment, fees payment for younger siblings/relatives and by the time I attend to my own personal list, you can only imagine what's left to be saved.

Little level of guidance.

You won't always get the level of guidance you got at school. in the work field, you are on your own. Bosses don’t have time to give you feedback for every little thing you do. It isn’t like school where everything you hand in comes back to you with an A-F grade and a feedback/comment. If you’re lucky, you will get a boss who gives you due praise and constructive criticism, but this isn't always the norm.

You've got to work late sometimes

You will be expected to stay in the office until your work is finished, and that doesn’t mean you get to come in late the next day. Even creative types, who get to start later, will finish later, and getting paid for overtime doesn't happen where I work.

Office drama is Inevitable.

When I heard my older friends discussing office drama, I thought they had decided to be a part of the drama. I was convinced that when I entered my own office, there would be no drama, and if there was, I just wouldn’t get involved. But office conflict is an inescapable part of working life, and it isn't optional especially in large organizations. You can checkout my coping strategies with female colleagues in this post. A friend once told me the best thing to do is just to maintain your lane/space but even at that, you still find those who voluntarily cross their lanes to yours. This I can only say, God help us.

A decrease in social life

At university, it was the norm to hang out often with friends, chat 24/7, go out even on weekdays, while weekends were spent recovering from the week. But in the working world, you can’t drink or party on weeknights anymore as your body won't be able to handle a hangover at work. You'll still spend your weekends recovering, but this time it's from working so hard and not from partying. Being that I work 9 hours a day, there's really no much time for social outings/social media as I usually get home tired, apart from the weekends which are usually spent resting from the busy week, attending weddings or just hanging out with friends.

So you see, the work life wasn't as easy as I imagined it to be. But with all that being said, I think I still prefer it to the student life or what do you think?