GOOD THINGS GROW; BAD THINGS DO TOO

‘ASSESSING THE SUSCEPTIBILITY OF DIFFERENT SWEET POTATO CULTIVARS TO LATE BLIGHT INFECTION’. — The Thesis topic that inspired an article in The New Yorker

Why Plant pathology? Oh God! I don’t even like this at all! But I wrote a proposal for a thesis topic in microbiology now, why was I assigned to this field? I was saying these things while I was hissing heavily when I saw the list for project supervision pasted on the notice board in the department of biological sciences, Tai Solarin University of Education.

I felt bad and I also felt like I wouldn’t do well knowing that that field of Biology didn’t interest me, but then, I had to finish the degree I started or my mom was going to break a bottle on my head if I packed and moved home just to tell my mom that I couldn’t finish what she started paying for because I am uninterested in the very thing that wraps up my undergraduate degree.

June 2024, I started my final year undergraduate research project in the field of Plant Pathology. I was excited when I was just getting started, I didn’t think that excitement was necessary because it was only a matter of time before stress took it away from me without my consent. My thesis topic looked/sounded simple until it was time to get my hands dirty.

‘Every project needs a plan’. If I took this serious earlier on, I would have had an almost perfect roadmap for what laid ahead. I didn’t have a plan right on time, I didn’t have anything to follow, I was consuming too much information from different sources, I was trying out too many things and was failing while at it. It took me a while to realize it, but I finally did.

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Well, you’re just about to read the thing I wanted you to know firsthand. While carrying out the research, I was wowed by a lot of things but the thing that amazed me the most was the reality of Growth. While it may seem normal to almost every farmer or person, planting, growth-maturity, and harvesting period, that’s not all there was to me. As far as I can remember, I had never planted sweet potatoes my entire life until that moment, I didn’t know how to. When you don’t know how to, you ask or seek, but in this case, I asked and sought farmers and YouTube.

The process that came after when I was done planting was watering. Waking up before the sun rose was not the easiest thing to do especially when I didn’t have morning classes to be in or an office to get to that early, but I did it anyway.

One thing was clear, if I didn’t water the plants, they were not going to survive and if the plants didn’t, there would be no result to show for my research and getting my degree would be a half-done job. Some weeks later, there was about 120cm in length of slips and that was enough visible growth to assure anyone that I was making progress.

This same way we ought to show up for everything worthwhile in our life. Tired, not in the mood, Strong, or Happy, show up consistently and water anything that you set out to do. Feed everything you want to do with the necessary nutrients for growth, you’ll be glad you did. In addition to this, I had the privilege of working with my supervisor in culturing the causal pathogen of Late blight infection, Phytophthora infestans. It had to grow too so it could be of proper use in this case. This didn’t do any good to the plants, rather, it made them unfit for consumption. After inoculation, I watched my precious sweet potatoes show signs of infection, gradually, woke up every day not just to water again, but to record the progression of disease.

So, you see, Good things grow, Bad things do too.

It’s a harsh reality of life, that even when you think/feel that you don’t want to do anything to build yourself or any other thing you want, something else that will endanger the future and that will make anyone unfit for the right association in the social world is right there growing too. One fact about it is that it doesn’t even stress you in the moment, it allows you to relax a lot until it is that time, the time you need it and then the realization sets in. Therefore, when you show up consistently and feed your goal/dreams, the good skills, attributes and things grow and there will be evidence to support it and even if it is otherwise too, you’ll have your result.

One other thing, either of the choices that you and I make, there will be progress, this I am sure of. Here’s 🥂 to growth, learning, carrying out more research and advancing in Life, Science and Academics.