By Oluwakemi Osobukola,
The rain was battering down that night, battering the windows of the Information Commons at the University of Sheffield like it had a personal vendetta against my sanity. I was slumped over a desk, surrounded by a war zone of books, journal articles, and coffee cups that had long gone cold, the kind of mess that screams “PhD hell.” The clock above the printers had ticked past midnight ages ago, but time didn’t mean much when every sentence I wrote felt like dragging my soul through mud.
This wasn’t the uni life they’d sold me on, you know. No wild nights out at Pop Tarts, no rolling into lectures half-asleep after a sesh at Leadmill. Nah, my uni life was a grind, a gauntlet I’d been running since I was six, fresh off the plane to the UK, when some kid on the schoolyard told me my skin looked like “poo.” That moment lodged itself in my brain, a splinter that festered through every classroom, every exam, every feedback session where the criticism felt like it was picking at that old wound. Imposter syndrome? It wasn’t just a shadow, it was a full-on beast, claws in my chest, whispering I didn’t belong, not here, not in these grand old buildings of Sheffield’s academic elite.
But here I was, the first in my family to even dream of a PhD, fighting tooth and nail to prove I belonged. The odds? One in two hundred for a Black woman like me. Every time I had to beg for an extension, it felt like a public shaming, another crack in the mask I’d built to show I was enough. Every “needs improvement” scribbled on my drafts was a punch to the gut, reopening scars I’d carried since that schoolyard. And then there was the bureaucracy, oh God, the endless forms, the emails that went unanswered for weeks, the funding applications that seemed designed to break your spirit. I’d spend hours chasing down signatures, only to be told I’d filled out the wrong bloody form, all while the clock on my stipend ticked down like a bomb.
Isolation hit hard too. The PhD bubble was real, especially in a city like Sheffield, where the nights were long and the winters felt endless. My mates from undergrad had moved on, started jobs, started families, while I was still here, chained to my laptop, trying to explain to my mum why I wasn’t “done” yet, why this degree took years, why it mattered. And the money, don’t get me started. Even with the scholarships, three offers, over £150K in total, a lifeline that felt like a fever dream, I was always one unexpected bill away from panic. Rent, groceries, a broken laptop, every expense was a tightrope walk, a reminder of how fragile this whole thing was.
And the pressure, the weight of being the first, the trailblazer. Every step forward wasn’t just for me, it was for my family, for every Black woman who’d come after me, for every kid who’d ever been told they didn’t belong. It was exhilarating, sure, but it was also crushing, like carrying a boulder up that Western Bank hill every single day. Rare? Try miraculous. Each scholarship was a brick I laid in the foundation of my future, proof that I wasn’t just scraping by, I was bloody well smashing it. But the beast never shut up, not really. Even now, in the dead of night, with rain pelting the windows and my laptop screen blurring from sheer exhaustion, it whispered: You don’t deserve this. You’re a fraud.
I slammed my laptop shut, sod it, I needed air. The Information Commons was a tomb anyway, all stale coffee and the faint hum of stressed-out students. I grabbed my coat and stepped out into the storm, the rain soaking through my trainers in seconds. Sheffield’s streets were deserted, the kind of quiet that makes you feel like the last person standing. But as the cold bit into my skin, something shifted. I thought of that kid on the schoolyard, of the lecturers who’d doubted me, of the feedback that tried to break me. I thought of the unanswered emails, the lonely nights, the bank account that always seemed to hover near zero, the weight of being the first. And I thought of me, still here, still fighting, still blooming through the cracks.
Because that’s what I was, wasn’t I? A flower not just pushing through concrete, but shattering it, roots tearing through the dark, petals blazing against the odds. From “poo” to PhD, my journey wasn’t just a story, it was a thunderclap, a roar that echoed through every hall I’d ever been told I didn’t belong in. And as the rain washed over me, I didn’t just smile—I laughed, a wild, defiant laugh that drowned out the beast, because I wasn’t just my own hero, I was a bloody legend, carved from the storms I’d survived, and no force on earth could silence me now.
Oluwakemi Osobukola is a PhD Researcher of Black Christian Women, Faith * Tech. She is also the founder of AdaptEd.