The Cranfield Journey: Part 5 – Seeing the Light Outside

This is the fifth article in this series chronicling my experience as an international student in the UK in 2016/2017. If you would not want to start at the end, you may want to begin where it all began

As an international student at Cranfield, I actively sought opportunities to visit places within or outside Cranfield. This pushed me to volunteer for any trip that suggested I would visit someplace new. The Cranfield Student Association routinely organised bus trips to explore cities outside the Milton Keynes area. They would advertise a given date and ask interested persons to sign up by paying a specified fee (usually cheap). On the given day, participants would join a bus (coach) on campus that would drive to the advertised city, then they would disembark and be asked to note where the bus is parked, proceed to roam around the city, and return to the bus at an agreed time. I joined this arrangement to visit the Kensington area of London, and later had a chance to explore Oxford. My journey to the Kensington area of London triggered aimless roaming of Imperial College, and landed me with a trip to Israel and Palestine in August 2017.

In April, a friend based in Germany visited me in the UK. After showing him around the Cranfield University campus, we took a bus trip to Cambridge, then took another long bus ride up north to Scotland, passing through Coventry, Birmingham, and Manchester. I later returned the favour by flying to Germany in June, where we toured Berlin, and then diverted our attention to Brussels in Belgium, the de facto capital of the European Union. I had also wanted to visit Paris, but this did not happen because the Germans were “stingy” and only gave me a one-month Schengen visa, and I did not want to pay for another visa to France. I also applied to attend a conference in Denmark but was not selected. Earlier, I had considered visiting the United States, but realised the potential for financial ruin would be greater, therefore, I decided to channel the funds towards acquiring the NEBOSH National General Certificate in Occupational Health and Safety to gain some more knowledge and boost my employment prospects.

Note: I began writing this article in 2018 and picked it up in 2024, seven years after leaving Cranfield.

The rest of my time at Cranfield was devoted to undertaking research to write a thesis. Just before writing this paragraph, I looked at email exchanges around that time to relive the events. Cranfield University provided a strong framework for students, supervisors, and support staff to ensure that each student was guided towards meeting academic standards. I had a wonderful supervisor, Dr Dawid Hanak, a young lecturer who had just finished his PhD the previous year (2016) and was awarded the Lord Kings Norton Medal in 2017. With his guidance, I settled on a topic titled “Economic and RAMO Assessment of the Self-Sustained Nano Membrane Toilet”, which focused on technoeconomic evaluation of the Nano Membrane Toilet, an innovative project being undertaken at Cranfield University with funding by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Dawid and I agreed on the terms of our engagement with timelines and agreed that I would have my full draft ready by 31 July 2017. I needed to source for data from different places including Chinese manufacturers for cost information. Lacking a finance background, I reached out to two friends I had met at the Venture in Management Programme (ViMP 2016) at the Lagos Business School. One was also in the UK doing her master’s degree programme, while the other chap was working for KPMG in Nigeria. I did the hard work despite some delays over data availability, combining the thesis with my part-time job at Bunnings and studying for the NEBOSH NGC exam. And yes, I did have my draft submitted by 3:47pm on the agreed Monday.

The rest of my time at the UK was spent switching employer from Bunnings Warehouse to F&P Wholesale to Amazon. I later learned that I could have looked for part-time jobs in say project management that paid a lot more, but at that time, I chased the kind of roles I was aware of. I loved my Bunnings role, but after completing my Cranfield programme, I now had liberty to go beyond the 20-hour per week limitation for students, however, the store was not willing to increase my hours. So, I switched in October to F&P Wholesale, where I learned that night shift was not for me. Working at Amazon’s Fulfilment Centre in Milton Keynes was another stressful time that confirmed what I had always known— I was designed to make money with my brain, not my hands nor feet.

Christmas came and I planned my return to Nigeria with a lot of uncertainty but with an assurance in my heart that I would have a job within two months. I did not bother waiting for my visa to expire. On 29 December 2017, I packed my bags and headed back to the country that had paid for an incredible time in the UK. But was I eager to see Nigeria or the beautiful lady who had challenged me to score 100% in an exam and inspired me to finish at the top of my class?