Public Felicitation to my Mentor and Sponsor@ 45
To: Dear Professor Saheed Aderinto (Professor of the Underdog)
I trust that this Birthday meets you heartily; if so, I believe so, doxology.
I am writing to wish you a very happy Birthday!
This occasion gives me an opportunity to publicly celebrate your impact on my career. I have always written for as long as I can remember. From secondary school to Ph.D. exam coursework, I was always the last to leave class until the invigilators said enough. I have kept a journal since I was eight, but your intervention in my writing totally and radically changed and transformed how I write for academic audiences and other outlets. Caveat, blame me not Professor Aderinto if you see any gap in my writing, sometime I no dey hear word like that. I still continue to learn many things on my own, from books you gave at the first LSA writing workshop in 2017 to those I bought in America with my hard-earned money to those I learned in African 700 in my new context(I thank God for that Professor too, a seasoned yet kind intellectual)
I showed you a picture of my small growing bookshelf in America when I ran into you at the airport in San Francisco after over a thousand books I left in Nigeria could not be accounted for anymore. I saw concern and pride in your eyes. Unverbalized concern of: “How much do you earn to buy books like this?Pride that these books were not intellectual aesthetics; they would be consumed or have been consumed. Pride that, like my mother would say to us to “make her labor count” (Mum would say eyin omo yi efi ise yin mi), that through self-improvement, I work to make your labor and that of many others count. In addition, I try to enhance and multiply what you taught and what I learned from you every day.
I remember the years before winning Dan David the biggest history prize and now that the world wants you to mentor them. Those were the formative years of your mentoring from May 2017 to 2020. The times you read my drafts and say this transition does not work here. This evidence needs to be stronger and paced with the preceding paragraph or idea. The times you wrote letters of recommendation for me every other week because I was the Queen of Applications(I have since changed). I know that now I belong to the "Older" Mentees Association because there are new mentees on the block who need your attention more than I do. In fact, given your past investments, it feels like a crime to ask you to read anything in the past couple of years. But I am thankful for the time past when my career growth was your personal project.
Five workshop days with you in 2017 transformed my thoughts about Academia and what I can do in it. You demystified everything some people made us believe was beyond reach, except we allowed them to torment us in the name of mentoring. I shall mention names when I write my memoir in 2090.
Thank you for all you did when I needed it most. I am carrying and paying it forward in my own way.
May God, the universe, and all that serve his purpose in the world favor and continue to honor you.
Happy Birthday Oga!
Posted on Facebook on January 22, 2024
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