Last year July, I received an internship offer from Citi bank Lagos to do a 3-week internship with them after a very rigorous application process. This was by far a very great opportunity for me, talking about the experience, networking, the opportunity to put a big name on my CV and not to mention the mouth-watering 6 - figure salary I heard interns get paid 💰. But guess what friends, I turned it down. When I told the friend that gave me the link to apply that I didn't take the offer, he thought amongst other things that I was crazy and making a huge mistake 😅.
But was I? I didn't think I was in the moment I was making the decision. Why didn't I take the offer you might be wondering... well the reason was pretty simple. I had another internship offer from the Africa Export and Import Bank (AFREXIM) in Egypt at the time and I thought the internship might start sometime before or during the Citi gig or the preparation for that internship (visa interviews and all) would interfere with the internship so I didn't bother taking it.
Fast forward to the end of July when the Citi gig was scheduled to end, I had not left for the AFREXIM internship and there was no major preparation that would have interfered with the internship at Citi had I taken it.
BOOM! Regret set in. "Had I known". "What if I had taken the Citi offer and even if anything happened, I'd still get to put the little work I did on my CV". "Why didn't I bone it and like Hannah Montana try to get the best of both worlds 😭". It's been over a year now, and I still wonder what could have been if only... And get this I only just went for the AFREXIM internship this June 😅. So I could have comfortably done both the Citi and the AFREXIM thing if I had known then, what I know now.
Regret is really a bastard 😂, Hindsight they say is so fickle, the feeling of "if I had known then what I know now" I would have done things so differently and possibly made the best out of my life.
I remember when we were being interviewed for Prefect positions in secondary school. I remember a number of my predecessors calling me to tell me to interview for the position of Head Girl (mostly because the term before that in SS2, I had pulled a huge shocker and come overall best in my set from being some random top 10 student, depriving the then person who was almost always 1st position in our class since JSS1) but at the time, I didn't want that.
Instead, when I appeared before the interview panel, like all the girls that interviewed on the first day (except 1, who ended up being our Head Girl) I said I wanted to be Assistant Head Girl. A few weeks later when the Prefect list was announced, I wasn't selected to be Assistant Head Girl, I was selected to be Labor Prefect Girl... and now that I think of it in hindsight, maybe I should have said I wanted to be Head Girl, maybe if I did, even if they didn't make me Head Girl, maybe I would have been Assistant Head Girl (you know, shoot for the moon, if you miss you hit the stars kinda thing 😂). Maybe
Disclaimer: it's not that being Labor Prefect Girl was not great (it was spectacular) or Assistant Head Girl wasn't what I truly wanted to interview for during the interview (it really was). But it still doesn't stop me from thinking, what if I said Head Girl and not Assistant Head Girl in that interview. Even if they took my word seriously and made me Head Girl, do I think I would have been a great one (possibly).
Don't get me wrong though, the Head Girl and assistant head girl we got in my set were amazing, kind, loved by junior students and stuff (unlike their strict evil Labor Prefect Girl 
😉😏). So maybe the Prefect Selection Committee's decision was for the best. Maybe saying Assistant Head Girl in that interview was for the best at the time.
While hindsight can be so fickle, if we're able to look past the pain of regret long enough to see the lessons each situation was there to teach us, maybe we might end up finding out that the seemingly big losses we made at some point in our lives were there to make us aware and conscious enough not to make the same kind of wrong decisions in the future that would actually make us miss out on what was destined to be the biggest wins of our lives!
So would I ever decline any great offer in the future because I'm expecting a greater one? Highly unlikely. I'd probably accept and wait till I have sufficient information to properly weigh all my options and make the best decision.
Would I ever sell myself short in an interview? Na! If I think I'm worth 1 billion, best bet I'm telling you I'm worth a thousand times that (if I hit the moon, great! if I miss and hit the stars, so be it).
These are just 2 stories out of the thousands I've had so far in my life, I know I'd still have reasons to regret stuff in the future, but I won't carry around the fear of regret with me, I'm taking the lessons I already have from my past regretful situations with me to my future regretful situations to get even more lessons to take with me to my next regretful situation 😆.
In short, stop regretting, start learning.
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