How I Succeeded Despite the Fact That I Thought I Would Fail

A person’s heart beats for success (Stearns, 2014). My life has been marked by a slew of struggles that have all but destroyed my confidence in life’s worthiness. In this regard, it is when we are on the verge of giving up that we are elevated, particularly if we continue (Zhao et al., 2013).
I grew up in a family where life was not easy; we were poor, and finding money to pay high school fees was a major issue. My guiding philosophy has always been to be positive about life. I was able to complete high school due to the kindness of well-wishers who donated funds to help me pay my tuition. I was unable to imagine that I would be in position to finish high school, however by good luck I did. The Time came when I got admission join A University to pursue a degree course. This marked a point when my family doubled the hustle in order to find fees for me to join and pursue my degree. All the doors towards finding fees were apparently shut and this left me always praying that a miracle may happen so that I could earn my degree and change the status of my family.

The worst tragedy to hit me hard was the death of my parents amid the hustle to find fees for me. This happened when a car lost control and crushed my parents. I was left helpless despite they got enough money for me to pay for the first semester. I maintained a positive mind as I was left with my two brothers who were 10 and 14 years old. Being the first born in our family, I had to work hard and be the breadwinner for my siblings who were left as orphans. The money that my parents left before they died was only enough to pay for the first semester which I paid and joined.

I vividly recall the year 2015 after I had finished a month in University; this was a turning point in my life. Being a medical student, I rarely had time to relax and talk to friends on emerging issues. Such a lifestyle changed when one day my friend Smith walked into my room with a magazine. I decided to read it, and came across a page with the heading, “Connect with Thousands of Friends Using Facebook, The Feeling is Wow!” The statement drifted my mind as it elicited a strong crave in me to join the platform. Later, I went for a discussion with Smith despite a series of thoughts that clogged my mind. I could barely smile. However, things turned jovial during the discussion, when my friends opened a group in Facebook called ‘The Great Medics’. My journey life in Facebook commenced here. With the days that followed, my life changed and began revolving around this new platform, which changed every aspect of my life and I ended up following a totally different but successful path than I had never imagined.

Unlike my colleagues, I had lagged in this wave of Facebook. In general, I had been slow in catching up in social media (Turkle, 2011). Until that day, I was more of a lurker than a participant. However, after only a week of joining, I had five hundred active friends, who shared a lot in all aspects of life. My network expanded to a point where a third of my college friends liked my page on Facebook. One evening as I was browsing as usual, a Chinese woman called Lisa sent me a friend request, which I confirmed. Lisa being an international friend changed my perspective and made me drown further in Facebook. With such attachment, I gained momentum and asked her if I could add her as an admin in my Facebook page. She gladly accepted the offer and she opened an avenue for the expansion of group to almost all the continents. What followed, within less than a week, the group had registered 2,000,000 friends that were on the global scene.

What began as a small online venture turned out to be a global phenomenon. For the first time, I had got famous, which drew attention of business people to use my page to advertise their products. Moreover, I decided to charge $40.00 for an advertisement, and in a week, I could have international businessperson who wanted their products advertised. I got the money, paid fees, and concentrated in my studies. In addition to that, the institution in which I studied welcomed me to create for them a page where they could post all updates since most students had subscribed to Facebook and so the information could reach them more easily (Oh, Ozkaya & LaRose, 2014). This gained me more money as I became linked to Microsoft and majority of companies, which had targeted at international marketing of their products using my site and page.

I conclusion my life changed significantly as I no longer lived from hand to mouth, and being an orphan, my tears were wiped. Consequently, I was able to pay my college fees, buy personal effects, and support my two brothers in high school. I could not believe my eyes for my life had been tough and getting money was hard. I could sit down and shed tears of joy, especially when memories of struggles in poverty crossed my mind.

References

Oh, H. J., Ozkaya, E., & LaRose, R. (2014). How does online social networking enhance life satisfaction? The relationships among online supportive interaction, affect, perceived social support, sense of community, and life satisfaction. Computers in Human Behavior, 30, 69-78.

Stearns, R. (2014). The Hole in Our Gospel Special Edition: What Does God Expect of Us? The Answer That Changed My Life and Might Just Change the World. Thomas Nelson Inc.

Turkle, S. (2011). The inner history of devices. Mit Press.

Zhao, X., Salehi, N., Naranjit, S., Alwaalan, S., Voida, S., & Cosley, D. (2013, April). The many faces of Facebook: Experiencing social media as performance, exhibition, and personal archive. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-10). ACM.