CONSISTENCY IS HARDWORK
I never thought I’d say this so soon but consistency is really hard. It’s quite easy to start something but to keep at it? Not the easiest thing to do. Does that mean I’ll give up? I’m a tough one…take a wild guess.
— Adedoyin Adesoye
It’s been 28 days since I started the HackBio Fellowship.
The fellowship program started off with introductory classes in Molecular Biology, Programming for Life scientists, Statistics and a specialized bio stack in Transcriptomics, Genomics or Drug discovery(P.s- I’ll write a separate post explaining all these in simpler terms). The first two weeks were pretty good as I was still basking in the excitement of being in a properly structured bioinformatics fellowship. The excitement did not last for long though…
About two weeks into the fellowship, I had a challenge. I had to be in school at the University of Lagos to sort out some issues with my thesis proposal, this made it hard to keep up with HackBio’s classes. I found it difficult to bounce back that even after i sorted out my thesis proposal issue, I still couldn't keep up. I missed 2 classes, got comfortable till i missed about 4 classes in total. I saw the way things were going and i knew if i wasn't careful I’d end up quitting, so i made a plan.
This plan was supposed to help me catch up with the classes i missed and to ensure i didn't miss another one. I wrote out my missed classes, divided them into bits and structured them into time blocks to make my plan achievable. I struggled with keeping up with the plan on some days but I pushed myself, prayed and spoke up when I needed help. It was new terrain for me and it wasn’t very easy navigating through the classes but with the help of my instructors who recorded each class and provided the videos for rewatching, things got easier. My community (friends and family) also made this easier for me to do as they constantly showered me with words of affirmation. I have the most thoughtful people around me. I’m really grateful for that.
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt this past month, it’s that you won’t always feel like working hard, you won’t always feel like showing up, you won’t always feel like being consistent with working on your goals but guess what? You have to. If you’re going to be successful, if you’re going to go from being a beginner to being a pro…You have to show up and put in the work.
It’s not enough to just have dreams or goals. Consistency is what builds success.
This month, a new phase begins. The gym phase. I’m sure from the name you can tell that it’s going to be intense but I’m tougher, you know 😉
Wish me luck!
P.s- A post on “Bioinformatics: A simple concept" will be out in two weeks. Watch out for it!
