4 ways living in Lagos affected my GMAT experience

Just a few tid bits from my experience that some of my Lagos peeps might find interesting.

Here are a few ways life in Gidi affected my GMAT experience.



1. Finding time to study was tough
With traffic and an intense work schedule and TRAFFIC, I spent a lot of time worrying about finding time to study and sometimes, I resorted to solving questions on my mobile phone just so traffic time was not such a waste. The combination of traffic and late hours typically made me so tired on weekdays that I ended up doing most (>90%) of my studying on weekends at the office.


2. Security guards were never surprised to see me at the office on Saturdays and Sundays
Wifi is much better at the office and thankfully my office was open to the idea of people coming in on weekends as long as you were meeting performance goals.

3. Exam dates I wanted were hardly ever available
With just one center in Lagos and one in Abuja (not sure if things have changed now) and with the whole of Nigeria wanting to write the GMAT, my preferred dates were almost always booked out. I had to make my exam booking at least 7 weeks in advance and it had to be on a weekday so I took a leave day for it.

4. NEPA took light right in the middle of my exam.
You read that right. Right in the middle of my exam, the oh-so-familiar cry of a UPS started blaring through the room. It lasted about 30 seconds. And after that, my screen went blank. I'm not joking. NEPA stopped me in my tracks during one of the most important electricity-dependent events of my life.
After electricity came back up, I realised I had lost about 10 minutes (10 precious minutes!) but I knew there was no time to cry and wail. I tried calling the attention of the coordinators but they didn't get my plight. One of them actually was like 'is it not just 10 minutes?'. There was no clearer signal that changing things then was a lost cause. I continued feeling deeply cheated but I knew it also meant I had to make the absolute best of the time I had left.

Sadly, there were no real positives to being in Lagos but the fact that I knew people who'd done it successfully under similar circumstances made me less worried about these challenges and more focussed on getting the results I wanted.

Hopefully this does something for someone else out there too.