A piano exam at 61, with Margaret Oyelaran
Retired midwife Margaret Oyelaran passed her grade one piano exam at 61 after 40 years of delivering babies. She and Harold talk about stiff fingers, kind teachers and practising in front of grandchil…
The semester I failed at 46
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Show notes
Starting badly on purpose
Before interviewing anyone else, Harold tells his own story honestly. He left a senior bank job in Lagos at 46, enrolled in history, and failed two of his first four modules because he studied the way he had at 19. This episode is about what he changed.
- Why memory at 46 is different, not worse, and how to work with it
- Studying in 25-minute blocks around a family and a part-time job
- Telling colleagues and relatives, and dealing with the raised eyebrows
- The reading method he borrowed from a 20-year-old classmate
The next small step: write down the course you keep thinking about, and the one thing stopping you.
Transcript
Good day, and welcome to The Late Bloomer Syllabus. My name is Harold Nkemelu. For 22 years I managed bank branches in Lagos, and at 46 I walked into a university lecture hall as a first year student, sat next to a boy who could have been my son, and failed two of my first four modules. That is where this show begins, with my own story, because I do not want to interview anybody about learning late without first admitting how badly I started. We will talk about memory after 40, about studying around a family, about the look on my brother's face when I told him. And I will finish, as every episode will, with the next small step, something you can do before Sunday. Settle in. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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