Happy birthday bro. May you live to fk your dream p” “Imagine graduating without smashing your classmate. How can you dodge a full course unit.” I angrily express myself on my WhatsApp status in a statement that my conscience won’t permit me to insert here. After all, a WhatsApp status runs for only 24 hours and soon it will all vanish. Right! Three hours later, one of my mentors abruptly texts me with a screenshot of the status I uploaded. She is literally questioning my sanity. How do I post something like this yet I represent a whole brand and I am still developing career wise? To add salt to the wound, she had not seen the status herself, but rather, an incognito individual had taken a screenshot and sent it to her with the quotation, “Isn’t this your girl?”. This was enough to get me shamefully running to my status and deleting something that had probably been watched by most of my contacts. At times we watch our hard work and effort all go down the drain as we face constant rejections and missed opportunities. We are the people blocking these opportunities from manifesting in our lives. Imagine such a post had been up on Facebook, and I didn’t have the right people around me to look out for me and have me put down that post. Few days later, another mentor who had probably seen my status as well sent me a picture with the words, “Student-Athletes please clean up your social media pages. It could cost you a scholarship”. Hence the birth of this article. During assembly in my primary school, we were tasked to mention the 5D’s. We all gambled with words like Determination, Discipline, Devotion, and other words that would seemingly be too complicated for a child to pronounce. Finally the teacher lightened the burden and the 5D’s were more or less ;Discipline. Discipline. Discipline. Discipline. Discipline! Ok! This probably sounded funny to me at that time,or I could have perceived it to be one of those things teachers bring up as a learning moment but seem fabricated . Why would someone make an acronym consisting of the same word? But the obvious implication to me now was that discipline is key in everything you do, or you will get nowhere in life. Your coach may always talk about discipline during practice, and you may understand him or her to mean playing by the rules while on court, but it goes beyond. Discipline stretches across all the other fields of your life. Let’s separate indiscipline from stubbornness. Unfortunately stubbornness has a limit, unless you are Denis Rodman and any act of stubbornness won’t cost you rather have more people calling you as your absence costs them a lot. Social media discipline or ethics, whatever you choose to call it, is one of the areas that 21st century society is lacking. We have the right to use a multitude of social media applications; Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp; but we must be careful and responsible in our use. Let’s not mention the random people we meet and exchange information with under the pretext of developing connections. The chemical reactions and imbalances it triggers in your bodies is real. The search for that constant dopamine hit keeps you liking, swiping, liking , and posting. Unfortunately, no one has taken up the responsibility to enforce social ethics on these platforms in mainstream society. No disclaimers on the effects on users’ mental health, and the possible ramifications of posting something that could possibly come back to haunt you later on in life are discussed, thus lulling is into a false sense of security. During applications, one of the things I have learned to always include are the links to my social media pages, as most organizations and institutions require them. You can’t fool everyone! Sooner or later you will be ousted by the content you are putting out. You will never understand the magnitude of a like on the wrong post! It so happens that my closest reference is the coach who sees my status updates and Facebook posts everyday. What a conflicting situation I would be placing her in! Nobody wants to have their name tarnished because of your recklessness. It’s every athlete’s dream to play professionally and be recognized either Nationally or Internationally as one of the best. I wonder how you reacted when you first read the opening of this article. Imagine presenting the best essay to the college of your dreams. Having the perfect SAT score. Backed up by the best references. But the admissions team checks out your social media pages and all it sees is a two faced individual! The reaction you had, attach it to the admissions panel that would break you with the words “We are sorry to inform you that after going through your application, we cannot offer you a vacancy” . And you would have no one to blame but yourself. Be vigilant in your interactions with these platforms; it could be a like, a comment, a reaction, a retweet, a post , or your bio that could cost you everything. Discipline. Discipline. Discipline. Discipline. Discipline!
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