Do you want your children to be exceptional? Teach them this! There is a genius in every one of us! We all have greatness locked up inside. Few of however ever peel the layers to the point of revealing that great deposit inside us. You may be able to get a key into your genius or your children’s genius this morning.

It was sometimes in 1998, some of my classmates know a part of this story, so you can corroborate it from them. I was in 300 level, and I was saddled with the responsibility of training a course that gave the faculty of engineering students a hard time – CHE 306. I knew next to nothing about the course myself, for reasons I don’t want anyone to learn. I was quite distracted and had not attended any of the classes. The exam day was drawing near, and I had been so helpful to many of my classmates for CHE 201 a year earlier and CHE 305 the previous semester, that the onus fell on me to do the same “magic” with CHE 306. Here was I, a few hours to my popular 5 hrs before the exam day tutorial, and I had not gained understanding of the course. I grabbed a friend – Patrick Egbunonu to quickly run me through the course, as at 3hrs to my 5hrs lecture, the only thing I had really come to understand a bit, was a little about the lecture, not much about the course.

It took less than 1hr to do a quick revision of the course with my friend, he was genuinely worried for me. I pleaded with him to be in the class to support me, in case I made a fool of myself. We ended our revision, I took my books to a further location – Sports Centre to read it up myself. Under the pressures of a 400+ sized class of brilliant Engineering students that I may humiliate myself in front of, I cried to God for understanding, and stayed with the books for 1hr to flip through and come to deep understanding. I wasn’t learning for me. I was learning for the faculty. At the dot of 9pm, the same night before the exam. Phi 102 Hall in white house was full to the brim. I had a reputation of teaching with authority. People had scored 90+As just from listening through one of my 5hr pre-exam lectures. The expectations where high. I ran through the course in 5hrs, explaining with great detail all the basics of the course. My friend was mesmerized and wondered if I had simply toyed with his mind, asking him for help. The class was enlightened, and as if to add a little icing on the cake – God revealed to me the major questions that were going to be set in the exam.

I was so confident I was in the right direction that I wrote the questions down before the class started, asked everyone who couldn’t solve it to ensure they waited till the end, as the questions would be easy for them to solve by then. When the class was done, we all solved it together. It was 2am by this time, we had a great time and all went to sleep until the exam. During the exam, the unbelievable happened. The exam halls were filled with Joy, and prayers going to heaven on my behalf, and God being glorified. Over 100 students came to see me to thank me and call me Prophet after the Exam. More details will be available later on demand 🙂

Here are the vital lessons summarized

1. Ask for help! Feeling too bright or too big to ask for another person’s help is really not being wise at all. We all have different angles on things, and there are people who already have clarity with what you are struggling with. Struggling doesn’t make you a dullard, it just means you haven’t seen it. Ask those who have. There is no way you will know what you don’t know you don’t know except someone helps brings you to consciousness.

2. Put your brain under pressure! The human brain is like carbon – it can manifest as graphite or diamond, it all depends on the pressure it’s under! Put your brain under pressure! The best pressure is the pressure of taking responsibility for others. My best courses were the ones I was under pressure to enlighten others on.

3. Seek God! God made all of man. Our brains are not a mystery to Him. He operates within a realm of no limits. The question papers and answer scripts were visible to him before they were conceived. God is alpha and omega, timeless and endless. Partnership with God is ultimate leverage.

4. Be bold! Courage creates a chemical balance that helps you locate the missing pieces. If we advance confidently in the direction of our dreams, we reach it before we thought we could. Don’t be a doubter, move forward with faith and have deep conviction.

Adeolu Akinyemi is a Pastor at Heaven’s Citizens Christian Centre, Entrepreneur at A2W Group and Nation Builder at NNC, SNG. (PEN) He can be reached on BBM: 2BB6354C Twitter: @deoluakinyemi Facebook: Adeolu Akinyemi