The University of YouTube,
DEAR STUDENT.
“Let me take you down memory lane,” Emeka said. “At the later days of my undergraduate studies, I attended an employability training in Lagos, Nigeria. This event had seasoned professionals, successful entrepreneurs and even a gubernatorial candidate for the Lagos state government, speak to us about life, career, and business; sharing some deep insights from their personal experiences which have changed my life” said Emeka excitedly, this time walking faster as I paced along. “One notable highlight of that event was when one of the speakers graciously approached the podium, having been quintessentially introduced by the beautiful host in a bright orange dress.”
Emeka smiled as he continued. “The speaker’s deep voice blared through the speakers as he eloquently asked a not so surprising question. How many of you here think that your certificate is sufficient to land you a job and help you thrive at it? Or, get you started on building a sustainable business in Nigeria or internationally? The room went dead silent. The speaker continued; I am sure your silence means you don’t think so and affirms to the fact that we are on the same page about having the right set of skills to add value.
He went ahead to give some recommendations, but the most outstanding according to him for our generation was YouTube. His reason being that the fastest way to learn to do something was by seeing (visuals), and that seemed to work perfectly for our generation since we are usually screen-glued, easily distracted and unexplainably lazy to take the difficult route especially as technology has come to stay; so why not use it he asked? At this point, Emeka waved in the conclusion of his story, as he walked sanctimoniously into the tall and beautiful parish building for the evening mass.
Dear reader,
YouTube is a gold mine of information, knowledge and skills. Research says that there about 2 billion monthly active users on YouTube, following Facebook in second place, as the second most active users platform. It is the second largest search engine and the second most visited website in the world with 500 hours of contents uploaded every minute, and 1 billion hours of contents viewed per day.
You know how a university which is a citadel of learning is made up of different disciplines divided into Schools, faculties, departments? We can liken that analogy to the YouTube design. A video viewing platform with a diverse range of content on various disciplines and subject matter, in different categories that you can learn about absolutely anything from.
Contents ranging from; hairdressing, languages, different topics, career, business, life, people, nature, biographies, documentaries, relationship, acrobatics, coding, singing, musical instruments, cooking and the list goes on.
Fun fact, you don’t just learn alone on YouTube, you can create contents and earn some money while at it.
You being at home due to the current happenings around the world, YouTube can be your next, but value-adding gig, aside from attending webinars, taking online courses and going hours on social media.
You are in the age and time when ignorance is no longer an excuse. Our parents and forefathers were able to achieve a lot even without access to the kind of information and exposure you have today. So, what excuse would you give to your children? What are you holding in your hand or using to read this article? Did you just say a phone? No dear. Just like John Obidi said, it is a wand, the magic of our time and yours is only as good as the combination of spells that you know. So what spells are you making with it?
We are not giving out points today, this is a heart to heart conversation and we are hoping that it resonates with you deeply! Enrol today at the University of YouTube and be on your way to competence.
AREAS OF CONCERNS:
It consumes a lot of data.
Agreed! But like we stated earlier, it’s a university and the fees to access all of the valuable information available to you is your data. With this mindset, it reiterates the over flogged topic of making an investment in yourself. You can leverage cheaper data offers made available to you from your chosen network provider.
YouTube is a double-edged sword.
As much as it can help build your competencies, there are also, some not so valuable contents there too. You have to apply caution to guide the quality of information you consume and do so with moderation to avoid addiction.
What did we miss that you can add? Please drop them in the comments section or write to us at prc.spdh@gmail.com, we would love to learn from you. Please feel free to drop any topic you would like us to write about. Thank you for reading!
