Thread by @mentorshipzim

I will now turn to my professional journey and the lessons I learnt along the way. I would like to preface this section by emphasizing that we can and should learn from one another, but it can be both futile&frustrating to be a copycat. No one has a perfect career template.

Having dispensed with that, I would like to add that learning from people who have made it or failed for that matter can save a lot of pain. When I look back I wish I had started learning from others much earlier in my life.

My journey begins in high school. I spent 6 years at Kutama College. By all accounts Kutama college is a good school&judging by school reports and prizes I was a good student. Good as it was, there was zero career guidance.

Understandably most schools put emphasis on grades, and forget to mould the learner into a force that is ready to take on the world after high school. Kutama college was unique, and some might even say privileged, in the sense that the patron was the former president of Zimbabwe.

The former president took personal interest in the school. He would often bring world leaders to the school to interact with the students. Additionally, the Old Boys Association had a vast array of very successful executives. Kutama college was very good at sowing seeds

of ambition but never gave us the road map. My form 3 geography teacher was a fairly young&ambitious recent UZ graduate by the name Beacon Don Mbiba. Whether by design or by accident, I will never know, but he planted in me the idea that the most rewarding career was one

with just a few people. This idea of a narrow road or as I often put it a road less often travelled has been with me since those days. And that probably contributed to my career decisions-both good and bad. Beacon Mbiba is now a world renowned expert in Urban Planning and a

professor at Oxford. I first heard about radiography while on a school trip to St Dominics Chishawasha. I was in a club called Christian Living Group(CLG) but those trips to St Dominics which is a girls high school were merely excuses to ogle at the girls. What do you expect when

boys from a boys high school visit a girls high school. As fate would have it one of the guest speakers at this meeting was a radiographer by the name Ruth Mudimu. During her presentation Ruth mentioned that there were very radiographers in the country and in the world.

After two years in which I engaged in every bit of mischief a teenage can engage in, I found myself with not enough points to enroll for medicine or engineering. It was heartbreaking. I still nurse the scars. The truth is I never found A level sciences challenging but I was so

so cocky that I didn't apply myself diligently. I could have done a Bsc general at UZ but the rumor was that people with that degree wound up as secondary school teachers. I did not want that, partly because both my parents were teachers. I had an option to go to NUST, but NUST

had just enrolled its 1st intake. In my vanity, it wasn't good enough for me. Besides all my friends and the good students were going to UZ. I was offered social work at. UZ and Mass Communication at Harare Polytechnic-but those were diplomas not degrees. I did not want to study

for a diploma when my friends were "doing degrees". I mention these things to illustrate the dystopian nightmare that lack of career guidance can unleash on teenage minds. In the midst of all this confusion, I ended up enrolling for a diploma in Radiotherapy Radiography.

I chose Radiotherapy for 2 reasons. First, it was offered by the College of Radiographers (London-UK). In my youthful vanity I took pride in studying for a British qualification. Secondly, at the time only 2 students were enrolled per intake making it an esoteric club of people

on "the road less often travelled". Countrywide there were less than 12 Therapy radiographers. Thirdly, we were paid a monthly stipend equivalent to 70 pounds which was a lot more than the UZ pay outs.

I would hasten to mention that I went about choosing a career the wrong way. Soon after classes commenced, it dawned on me that Therapy Radiography had no prospects for career development&certainly none for upward mobility. At the time, there were no clear promotion procedures.

I concluded that I had made the wrong decision. It not only bothered me, but it literally depressed me. I was the most rebellious student imaginable. I missed as many classes as I wished but still excelled especially in the Radiation Physics and Oncology. After graduating I spent

18 months at the Parirenyatwa Hospital Radiotherapy Centre before moving to the Nuclear Medicine department for some on the job training in Nuclear Medicine. Two unrelated events occurred in 1997 that totally changed my trajectory.

UZ acquired a CT scanner and advertised for a radiographer. I applied and got offered the job and a salary that was $6000 more than what the government was paying me. At the same time the John Wakeford Trust advertised for a fellowship in Science. I applied for that too.

The John Wakeford Fellowship was open to anyone as long as they were working in or studying science. In my application I proposed to study for a degree in Nuclear Medicine at King's College in UK. Three recommendation letters were required. I got my recommendations from 3 profs.

These three profs were working at UZ and Pari. Obviously, they were by far more qualified than I was. I was short listed for the interviews which were conducted by the Ernst&Young Bulawayo office. I really wanted this scholarship. The week of the interview I got friends to

help me prepare for the interviews. I sought advice from whoever I thought was helpful. I spent more than 10 hours each day being interviewed by friends&interviewing myself. My interview was at 4:30 pm. I arrived in Bulawayo around 1pm and went straight to the offices.

When I got to the offices I got the shock of my life. All the three professors who had written my recommendation letters had also applied for the fellowship& had also been shortlisted. I didn't know&still don't know what to make of it. The young me felt betrayed. All 3 of them

were proposing to do amazing things in AIDS/HIV research. And there I was with my little diploma proposing to study nuclear medicine. I was shattered. Part of me thinks that when I asked them for recommendations they "stole my idea" and "ran with it". That experience taught me

me the importance of trustworthy mentors. Surely, they were not obligated to tell me of their interests in the fellowship but if they had done so, I would never have felt betrayed. BUT HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS. By a miracle, the young with the diploma was awarded the fellowship.