The Biscuit Wrapper That Started It All

I was supposed to be studying Medicine.
At least, that was the plan.

Like many Nigerian students, I had spent years imagining a future that seemed straightforward. Study hard. Pass the exams. Get into university. Become a doctor.

When it was time to apply for university, I chose the University of Ilorin and set my sights on Medicine. I waited for the admission list with the excitement and anxiety familiar to every student who has ever pinned their future on a single outcome.

Then the admission came.
I had not been offered Medicine.
I had been offered Forestry and Wildlife.

I remember staring at the admission offer, unsure of how to feel. Forestry and Wildlife was not what I had imagined. It was not the answer I had been hoping for.

Part of me wanted to reject it immediately.
Another part of me did not want to spend another year waiting.

So I made a deal with myself.
I would accept the admission, get into school, experience the course, and decide later whether I wanted to write JAMB again and pursue Medicine.

That was the plan.

Life, however, had other plans for me.

University came with lectures, assignments, tests, departmental activities, friendships, leadership responsibilities, and the general chaos that comes with being an undergraduate. Before I knew it, semesters were passing.

The idea of rewriting the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board Exam slowly disappeared.

Not because Forestry and Wildlife suddenly became my dream course, but because life kept moving.

I immersed myself in school. I became actively involved in my department and eventually served as Vice President in my penultimate year. I learned how to work with people, communicate effectively, and manage responsibilities.

What I did not know at the time was that the most significant turning point of my university years would not come from the Forestry department.

It would come from a room I entered out of pure curiosity.

Long before that moment, though, there were signs.

I have always been drawn to design.
Not in the professional sense.
Not in the way people talk about design today.

I simply loved beautiful things.

I was the girl who doodled in the margins of her notebooks during lectures. The girl who spent time admiring packaging and wondering why certain products looked more appealing than others.
I remember staring at biscuit wrappers and asking myself questions that seemed insignificant at the time.

Why does this look attractive?
Why do these colours work together?
Why did someone choose this font?
Why does this package catch my attention while another one does not?

I experimented with crocheting.
I decorated cakes.
I found joy in arranging, creating, improving, and making things visually appealing.

At the time, I thought they were just random interests.I had no idea they were all pointing me in the same direction.

Then one day during my final year in university, I walked into a seminar organized by the Computer Science department.

The topic was UI and UX Design.

I did not enter that room looking for a career.
I did not enter hoping to find my purpose.
I entered because I was curious.

And that curiosity changed everything.

As the speakers explained user experiences, interfaces, and design thinking, something clicked.

For the first time, all those seemingly unrelated interests made sense.
The doodling.The fascination with packaging.
The obsession with visual details.
The curiosity about why people interacted with things the way they did.

Suddenly, there was a name for what I had been interested in for years.

More importantly, there was a career built around it.

I left that seminar excited.
I went home and started researching.
Then I started learning.

Then I started applying.
I enrolled in internships.
I joined bootcamps, some of them were She Code Africa product design track, HNG.

I participated in learning communities, attended events, applied aggressively for opportunities, optimized my linkedin profile, built my design portfolio publicly, i asked important questions.

More importantly, I made mistakes, oh yes, i made a lot of them.
I learned more.

Then repeated the cycle all over again.I was hungry to improve.

One of the biggest lessons I have learned in life is that curiosity is powerful, but curiosity without action changes nothing.

Many people are curious.
Few people actually do something about it. I wanted to do something.

One of my earliest opportunities came from a health technology startup based in Canada, formerly known as Dark Matter Database.

At the time, I had only recently started learning design. My portfolio was nowhere near where I wanted it to be. My experience was limited.

I saw an opening for a UX Designer role and applied.

I did not get it. That should have been the end of the story.

But something about the company's mission stayed with me. Their work focused on understanding the experiences and pain points of underserved communities, particularly Black and African populations.

I genuinely wanted to contribute. So instead of moving on, I sent another email.

I introduced myself again and asked whether there were other ways I could support the team. I did not care about titles or payment.

I cared about learning.

I cared about contributing.

I cared about being in the room.

To my surprise, they responded.

I was offered the opportunity to work as a UX Researcher.

Looking back, that single email taught me a lesson that has followed me throughout my career.

Sometimes the first answer is no.
Sometimes the opportunity exists, just not in the form you originally expected.
That experience eventually led to something I still remember vividly.

My first payment in dollars. It was not a life changing amount.

It was around two hundred dollars.

But when it arrived, I felt something I had never felt before.

Validation.

Not because of the money itself, it was because it represented proof.

Proof that the skills I was developing had value.
Proof that the hours spent learning were not wasted.
Proof that I could build something meaningful from this path.

That first payment gave me confidence, and confidence creates momentum.

Over the years, that momentum carried me into opportunities across different industries.

I have worked in health technology.

Education technology.

Financial technology.

Communications.

Marketing.

Product development.

Design opened those doors.

And for that reason, I will always be proud to call myself a designer.

Some people hear a story like mine and assume that I eventually moved away from design.

That is not true.

I am still a designer.

A very proud one.

Design simply taught me to see more.

The deeper I got into products, the more I became interested in everything surrounding them.

I wanted to understand why products succeeded.

How teams collaborated.

How decisions were made.

How businesses grew.

How users behaved.

How ideas became reality.

That curiosity led me to study project management.It led me to explore digital marketing. It led me into conversations with developers, founders, researchers, marketers, and product teams.

Over time, I realized something important.

Products are never built by one person.

Every successful product is a collection of different perspectives coming together.

Design gave me a seat at that table.

Curiosity helped me understand everyone else sitting around it.

That same curiosity also introduced me to communities that changed my life.

I attended technology events whenever I had the chance.

Open source gatherings.

Design communities.

Industry meetups.

Networking sessions.

Sometimes I went to learn, sometimes I went to meet people.
Sometimes I just wanted an excuse to wear the clothes that had been sitting in my wardrobe while I worked from home.

But every event gave me something valuable.

Knowledge.

Perspective.

Friendships.

Opportunities.

Many of the people I call friends today started as strangers I met because I decided to show up.

Of course, not every experience was positive.

One rejection still stands out in my memory.

By that time, I had completed internships, participated in bootcamps, and worked on numerous projects.

Someone reached out regarding an opportunity involving virtual reality and immersive digital experiences. I was excited.

I was also intimidated, the truth was that I had never worked on a project like that before, but instead of allowing that to stop me, I decided to learn.

I reached out to a friend with experience in three dimensional design.

We studied the brief together, we researched, we brainstormed.

We built what we genuinely believed was a strong submission.

I was proud of the work.

Then the response came.

The rejection itself was not the painful part.

It was the way it was delivered.

The feedback felt dismissive.

Cold, as though none of the effort behind the work mattered.

I remember feeling deeply disappointed.

Not because I believed I deserved the opportunity.

But because I had pushed myself beyond my comfort zone.

I had learned.I had grown.

I had given it my best, for a while, I carried that disappointment around.

Then one day, I deleted the email.

And I got back to work.

That experience taught me that not everyone will appreciate your effort, not everyone will understand your growth, not everyone will see the courage it takes to attempt something unfamiliar.

And that is okay.

You do not need everyone to believe in you.

You just need to keep believing in yourself long enough to continue.

As my career grew, something unexpected happened.

People started reaching out to me for guidance.

Some wanted advice on getting into tech.

Others wanted feedback on their portfolios.

Some simply needed reassurance that they were capable of succeeding.

Over the years, I have had the privilege of mentoring aspiring professionals through academies and communities including Lagos School of Programming, TrevoTech Academy, and several formal and informal mentorship relationships that began with a simple message in my inbox.

Watching people gain confidence has become one of the most rewarding parts of my journey.

Watching someone land their first opportunity.

Watching someone overcome self doubt.

Watching someone realize they are capable of more than they imagined.

Those moments remind me of the people who helped me along the way, because none of us truly grow alone.

Today, I am still learning, still evolving, still figuring things out.

I do not have life perfectly mapped out.

I do not have all the answers.

What I do have is experience.

Experience has taught me that action beats overthinking.

That momentum beats perfection.

That growth is often hidden inside uncertainty.

And that some of the best opportunities in life begin with a simple decision to be curious.

Sometimes I think back to that young girl staring at biscuit wrappers and wondering why certain designs looked better than others.

She did not know she would become a designer.

She did not know she would mentor people, work across industries, or build a career in technology.

She was simply curious.

And maybe that is the lesson I want to leave with anyone reading this:

You do not need to have everything figured out.

You do not need a perfect plan.

You do not need certainty before you begin.

Sometimes all you need is enough curiosity to ask a question and enough courage to follow where it leads.Because every version of myself that I have become started with a question I was curious enough to pursue.