As an individual, I have always had a different perspective about the world in general, due to different traumatic events I have experienced. I believe there should be some kind of balance in the world, In a world filled with individuals driven solely by their ambitions and selfish interest, we need selfless individuals to keep humanity from being exterminated.
Having this at the back of my mind, I try as much as possible to be kind towards people, especially those in desperate need of it, this attitude of mine started manifesting naturally thanks to my religious background, it made me feel good about my self and my surroundings but based on my experience so far, I can boldly say it is not a rosy path. When I cross path with individuals with different perspective about the act of kindness, their reasons for not being kind seems justifiable.
I once had an encounter with an individual I met during my pursuit of Higher national diploma in mass communication in Moshood Abiola polytechnic, it is an academic practice all over the world for every graduating student to undergo final year thesis/practical/project which serve as a partial fulfillment for the requirements of the course a student is pursuing. it is one of the most stressful aspect of the whole final year exercise.
During this exercise we have a lot of student who are unable to carry out the exercise themselves due to reasons best known to them, being the kind of person with vast knowledge in research methodology, I commercialised on this skill and advertised my skill on WhatsApp platforms of different departments, I got good feedback especially from student in my department.
D͏e͏s͏i͏g͏n͏e͏d͏ a͏ b͏u͏s͏i͏n͏e͏s͏s͏ f͏l͏y͏e͏r͏ w͏i͏t͏h͏ c͏a͏n͏v͏a͏
Business was rolling, everything was moving smoothly. I tried not to get too greedy by controlling the numbers of research project request I accept because I have to make sure it doesn't affect my own project and also I have friends who needed assistance with their research project, I offered to help freely but they were also others who could not afford the whole amount I charge for the research project service I offer, by being considerate of their financial status, I came up with discount and installment payment which varies depending on the persons budget. all this just to ease their burden.
As a result of this I gained a lot of attention compared to others that also offer the same service, it felt good at the moment. little did I know that kindness can be hurtful sometimes. due to my competence in offering the service, I got referred to a lot of student, among them was a female student called olaifa mojisola, she was also a mass communication student in my department. she happens to be a supervisee under my project supervisor, she explained her financial difficulties, I felt so much pity for her. I gave her the best discount that I have never given anyone else.
Our business relationship started well but it became a little complicated and toxic along the way. As a student you are expected to have some background knowledge of the project topic you have chosen to research on but she has none. My supervisor is very strict and before he could approve any chapter and ask you to proceed to the next chapter, you must give him detailed explanation about the content of the chapters. In her case, she doesn't have any background knowledge of the topic you chose, she has to rely solely on the material I gave her, to make matters worst she refused to read the material I gave to her, she claimed it was too complex for her and she is not a fan of research. I was frustrated, I had to create time to tutor her on research methodology as a subject and explain to her how to give a detailed explanation of the information in her research project.
As if that was not bad enough, I was almost done with her research project, I was about to give her chapter 5 precisely. so I requested for my balance for the service I offered her, she became reluctant to pay and claimed I over charged her and she further disclosed that her friends paid lesser for their research project else where. i explained to her that we negotiated before she accepted my service and secondly, no one will be willing to go through all that tutoring stress for free without charging her but I didn't, at least she should consider that.
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She became furious and claimed I was rude to her and started using offensive words. knowing how women can be I just ignored her and held unto her chapter 5 because she is not even close to paying up to 70% of the amount we agreed upon. what she did next was alarming 😂, I knew she had close relation with my supervisor, but never knew she was a cousin to my supervisor. so she threatened to report me to my supervisor, though I knew my actions might seem a little unethical to my supervisor because as his project supervisee offering such service to another supervisee under his supervision but I also knew she will be hurting herself because she will have to explain to her uncle why she couldn't do her research project herself 😂😅. I asked her to go ahead and report 😅
To cut the long story short, she eventually paid her balance, I guess she must have realised that she would be doing herself more harm than good by reporting but that didn't stop her from spreading outrageous rumours about me in my department, which I didn't care because I had a positive reputation about the conduct of business.
Despite me turning deaf ears to her wild accusations, are attitude influenced the way I was willing to help others, I withdrew a little and reduced my level of availability during the project exercise. the funniest part was on the day of our defence, the defence coordinator instructed us to come into his office in pairs, we were paired together 😂 and she begged me to give her a summary of her research project, which I did but I couldn't stop laughing, after the whole defence activities was concluded we went our separate ways and never spoke to each other again. humans are so unpredictable.
This write-up was inspired by weekly featured content titled "Un-favored" in hive learners community.