Transition is never easy especially if one is leaving their comfort zone and moving in to a place that’s not as comfortable. Many youth today graduate with the hope that they will get a job as soon as they leave school.

Unfortunately this is not often the case leading many into a state of joblessness because ours is a generation where you refer to the home in which you live as ‘my house’ knowing very well that it belongs to your parents. 

To make matters even worse, we still count on our parents to help find us jobs upon graduating from school.

When you take things into perspective you realize that this is also not quite fair to the parents especially because they went through the struggle of paying your fees. Frankly speaking this isn’t because we lack the resources or the ability, it is simply our lack of initiative.

We continuously fail to realize that the world will not and cannot wait for us to get our lives in line. School is only meant to equip you with the skills you need to make a future for yourself and is not the answer to everything. The sooner you realise this and quit blaming the education systems for your inability to think outside the box, the sooner you will make something of yourself.

There is a solution to all this, in fact you don’t need to wait until you graduate to start.

Entrepreneurship! Truth be told many of us today do not even look at entrepreneurship as an option, we are so set on the jobs we will get after graduation that we limit ourselves to a single line of thinking or the white collar mentality. It is this sad culture of conformity that causes a lot of frustration among fresh graduates.

Luckily, we do have innovative minds in our midst. There are some individuals that have taken it upon themselves to become job creators instead of job seekers. These are people that decided to look beyond the horizon and yet they had no supernatural powers. In daring to break the norm and walk where there was no path they’ve left a trail for those of us who intend to follow in their footsteps.

Entrepreneurship is risky business and you will never find any successful person saying it is easy but I’ll tell you this, nothing worth having is easy to get.

So instead of wondering why your favorite uncle isn’t returning your calls, challenge the notion of having to depend on someone else to find or give you employment. Refuse to be scared by how stressful starting your own business can be but instead focus on all the positives that will come out of going out on your own. Just like anything successful in life, starting a business needs proper planning and preparation.

It is also important to understand that failure is not meant to discourage but to allow you to learn from previous mistakes and this goes for business as much as any other field in life. We all want the good life but not all of us are willing to put in the effort to get this life.

Let us put to use our untapped potential and who knows?  Maybe your idea could make you the next Mark Zuckerberg but all that can only happen outside your comfort zone.

The author is a student at University of Rwanda, College of Science and Technology