Why do loving parents sacrifice everything to make sure they buy the best education they can afford for their children?
To get them into the right crowd: alumni of a great school.
Gone are the days when your alumni were your best friends who meant well. Today’s dot-com alumni are devious. They speak and pretend to mean well. Inside are bad souls of people cursing and plotting all kinds of bad plans against you. Their actions speak louder. They will never offer any helpful opportunity!
Our parents were lucky. They made the right friendships at school. These later took over power, great jobs and everything in between. They got front seats. They invited their alumni to the table and gave them jobs and all opportunities. Just a mere mention one went through a certain school during a certain period, makes doors open.
To date, just having gone through a traditional school give people a high sense of themselves. On a scale of one to ten, when it comes to shortlisting candidates such people usually start at four, while the rest of us from unknown schools start at 0!
I missed going to a traditional school.
The fact is I could not make the cut although I was the best in my school and no one has ever broken the record I set over 20 years at an ordinary level. Also, I did not have a political father figure to knock on the doors for me.
I envied the folks who went to those schools. I still do. Only that not everyone who has gone through them mined the gold.
Once in a while, you meet alumni of a traditional school and you get disappointed at the quality of their work ethic, quality, and overall discipline.
It has taken me years to realize that the true value of a great school is the quality of the alumni. Which people do you know? Which people did you attend classes with? I benefited a lot from an international course I attended because of the quality of classmates. Folks we met just for 5 days, have become a great source of inspiration and connections.
The alumni
All schools follow the same study curriculum. It is the kind of people who you study with the curriculum that defines your career. Great people have gone through Makerere University. Which kind of people were in your class while you were at MUK that make a difference to your life. The same applies to Harvard and any other global universities.
Gone are the days when people valued alumni and social networks. Classes of the 1990s and earlier created winning bonds. These people were a close-knit group of colleagues and classmates in an era of no computers, mobile phones, and social media. They connected at a personal level, not at a mobile phone level. They visited each other’s rooms instead of chatting via WhatsApp. They were real.
Today the old boys and girls are friends in disguise. They are enemies. Competitors who are doing better than the other. Even parties or get together events are seen as opportunities to show off and get even with your old boy or girl.
It is so bad.
It is for this selfishness and narrow mindedness that old men and women are the ruling class. The alumni of folks who were at University at the turn of the 20th century are fake friends!
Welcome to the social media alumni. Where you invite 100 people, all confirm to attend only to have just two showing up! It is unfortunate.
The alumni are dead. Old boys and girls are no longer a strong social group it used to be. Whereas the alumni of the old traditional schools of the years gone by are in the driving seat, recent graduates are not as strong bonded.
Drop the phone and become real. Go and great your friends. No one gets kids via the phone. You must have physical contact!
Copyright MUSTAPHA B Mugisa, 2020. All rights reserved.
