It's 6 am on Thursday and I'm half-awake in the back seat of our Toyota, my head resting on my older sister's shoulder. The faint beginnings of the sun greet the four of us as we pull out onto the highway from our neighbourhood. The roads are uncharacteristically quiet, almost eerie. We speed past skyscrapers crisscrossed by empty pavement, leaving behind the normally bustling city of Lagos I call home. When I open my eyes at the top of the hour,...

"You'll know when you find a match because it feels like home." Home for me is where I discovered myself. It's in Lagos, where my horizons were broadened by the eclectic perspectives of my fellow Lagosians, It's in Iyara, where my cousins and I learn about our culture from my grandmother and it's at my boarding school in St. Catharines, Ontario where I experienced my first winter. Home for me is an intellectual environment where I'm free to explore the...

It’s Friday evening and my family is gathered in the living room catching up on the events of the week past. My thirteen-year-old self is sitting on the far left armchair as I always do, hanging back from the conversation. I’m more interested in the almost imperceptible voice of the news anchor. My attention from the program about oil dependence is snatched by the flashing headlines at the bottom of the screen; another terrorist attack in north-eastern Nigeria....

High GPA,...

Intelligent, Tenacious,...

What's not...