I’m working hard to fulfill my dream –Prof Folayan
Prof Folayan
You are a professor in paediatric dentistry. What
informed this career choice?
I think that’s an excellent question. In secondary school when
it was time to fill UTME (Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination) form, I
had a colleague I really liked and she said she was going to study
Metallurgical Engineering. Those days we didn’t have guidance and counsellors.
Of course, the name felt fabulous to me, so, I went home and I said I was going
to study Metallurgical Engineering but my father said, ‘No, go for Medicine.’
Out of rebellion, I said I wasn’t going for Medicine. I got back to school and
there was this lady who usually sat in front of me. I looked into her form and
she filled Dentistry. Believe me, that was how I filled Dentistry in my form
too. Today, I have come this far; I have grown in the profession and developed
a career. I have found the area of the profession that I like, which is
research. So, I found myself within the world of research and within that
world, what I love to do is epidemiology, social science kind of thing. When I
reflect on the beginning, if I had a counsellor, I probably would have gone to
social sciences.
There’s a general belief that most people who
studied dentistry and some other medical science courses actually wanted to
study Medicine and Surgery but failed to make the list. How was it for you?
I think in my own generation, dentistry wasn’t known as a
career. Like I told you, I really didn’t know what it was. I wasn’t even sure
of Medicine and Surgery either. But we are now in an era where a lot of people
are choosing dentistry because they now understand what it is. At least in my
own college, I can’t remember the last time we had students whose first choice
was medicine but found themselves in dentistry because they couldn’t get
medicine. It doesn’t happen like that anymore. People are choosing dentistry as
their first choice, not because it’s an alternative to medicine.
You hold two other master’s degrees – in
business administration and in education administration and leadership. What
spurred your interest in these other areas?
I had my residency in the university; the hospital I worked in
was in a university. So, I told myself: How can I be in a university and not
maximise the opportunities that come with working in the university? So, that
was why I went for the MBA.
My master’s in education administration was motivated by the
challenges I faced teaching students. I worked in the university but I wasn’t
trained as an educator. So, I went for training in education to improve my
competence.
How did the further degrees impact your
career?
I think both of them have helped me in my ability to do a number
of things. For example, in my MBA, I specialised in human relations and I think
that was exceptional. I have not used my MBA to work but it has enhanced my
ability to relate with human beings. That area of my specialisation gave me a
lot of power in terms of relating with people better. It has helped me improve
in terms of my teaching and administrative competence.
How do you manage all your many commitments
both at the university and in the international scene?
I think time itself chose to be elastic. If you want to do more,
it allows you to do more and if you don’t want to, it contracts itself for you.
For me, one of the things that work for me is that whatsoever I lay my hands to
do, I just make it work. I remember as a child, someone said to me that the
richest place is the grave and I asked why? He said because many people had
dreams that they never fulfilled and they go with it to the grave. As a kid, I
said that that story would never be told of me. I would not go to my grave with
the dreams; I would rather go after them and fail rather than not try at all.
So, that drives me.
If I think of anything, I’d do it. If I have to create it, I
will create it and I won’t step back because of money. I dream first, then, I
look for the money. I guess that makes me do these many things that I see and
get involved with.
What impact has your work with the
international community had on your career?
I think what you take away from your work in
the international community is the network. There’s no way you will have such a
network and it wouldn’t rub off on you and your perspectives. It allows you to
understand diversity in terms of human colour, culture, language. You just become
a better person because you are situated within a lot of diversity and you have
to embrace it because for you to continue to be in that space, it means you are
embracing the concept of globalisation and you are becoming a global person.
So, I think that mix works for me. And the benefit is that it enables me bring
that perspective to my work as a lecturer in teaching my students. If your
network is small, you can only do small things. If your network is huge, you
will do huge things. I probably will place my network like low-medium but the
difference is enormous.
You’re no doubt a high-flying career woman.
What challenges come with your professional rise?
I think most women in my generation, who chose career, would
have faced similar challenges – struggles with the home front. In a world where
women are supposed to be silent, it takes an exceptional man, who is your
partner, to give you the room to flourish because there has to be an
understanding, especially when your partner is not in your field. When a doctor
isn’t married to a doctor, for instance, the tendency for conflicts is more
because the man doesn’t understand that field. These jobs are so demanding that
your partner would have to play roles that are traditionally associated with
women. If a career woman must flourish, that kind of scenario is inevitable. If
she doesn’t get that kind of support, she comes under some strain and it will
take someone exceptional to walk through that strain and still make a success
of their career.
Something would have to go and in my own case, I guess it was my
husband because I chose to stick to my career. Not because my career is
everything but because I love what I’m doing and if he wasn’t going to support
me, I was not going to let it go to satisfy his ego and wings. But that was a
tough time for me because my senior colleagues weren’t also supporting me. They
saw me as a rebel. It wasn’t easy. I don’t know how I did it but I walked
through the valley of the shadow of death; I tell you. For some reasons, I hung
on and continued to do what I love to do. Somewhere, the darkness just gave way
and I found light.
What advice would you give to younger ladies
aspiring to have a good career life?
What I would suggest is that they must choose; it’s a choice.
They must keep focus. It’s very easy for you to find excuses, so, keep your
eyes on the ball. You will get to a point in your life when you can’t do
anything in your life again and you will regret it because you will look back
and see that if you had just stayed the course, the big break would have
happened. If you give in and let go, you will go into your grave with regrets.
So, it is important for you to keep your eyes on the ball and it means that
your race will not be at the same pace with your peers. However, ensure that
you are not moving off the target.
You also have to be flexible with life. You can’t be rigid,
else, you are going to break. Being a Christian is also one of the things that
have guided and sustained me this far. I have my own beliefs that have guided
me. I believe that a seemingly bad situation is taking me somewhere. It is part
of life’s lessons. So, it’s a process, you don’t get to success by accident.
There must be a strategic plan.
How have you been able to strike a balance in your
career life, personal life and family life?
One of the things I share with people is that I don’t think I
have a typical life. It’s balanced the way it is but not typical and I will
explain. First, I don’t have a husband. I am not going home and thinking that I
will have to cook for a husband or take care of some in-laws. I don’t have that
problem in my life.
Secondly, I have three excellent, beautiful kids but I don’t
live with them; they are in the UK. They all left at age 18 when they started
their A levels and from there they’ve been living their lives. So, all I think
about is to make sure that I eat my food and take care of myself. So, I have
time in my hands like no other person who has to think about husband, three
children and has to do schoolwork.
I have a lot of time on my hands in a way that other women may
not have, so, that gives me some latitude and allows me to be more productive
because I have so much time that I can devote to myself, that a career woman at
a younger age might not have.
You have to make your life work within whatsoever the context of
your life is, to create your own success story.
Have you been faced with gender inequality or
discrimination in the course of your career?
I think that’s a big one. I started to have a sense of the
impact of gender discrimination when I got closer to the top. Before then, I
wasn’t conscious of any and I can’t recall any. You work with your male peers
and they admire your work and say you are exceptionally good, they praise you
but when it’s time to give you work, they give you work like a secretary. They
will never recommend you to become the leader of a big group. There was a case
like that where this guy was really impressed. He said he was going to give me
a job to do but I refused to do it because it was an “invisible” job. I knew if
I were a man, he would have recommended me to be the leader of a group or maybe
the head of a committee, something visible. I figured out what he was trying to
do because in his head, he couldn’t see a woman leading. Women are always seen
as the secretary, deputy chairmanof a group or committee and so on. So, for me,
that’s the kind of experience I have had for gender inequality. I think it’s
quite an unkind world when you think about that.
But there are also cases where opportunities are thrown at women
but they will decline. They say no at first and it takes the leader to say, ‘I
am not taking no from you. You can do it’ and tell them to go and do it. This
is unlike men; it is very unlikely that a man will say no even if he has not
played that role before but a woman will cringe. It’s the socialisation that
makes her cringe, conversely, the man feels that it’s a disgrace to say no even
when he has not done it before.
In our culture, when you say no, people encourage you to say
yes, but in the United States or in the international community, once you say
no, then it is no. I have been conscious of that fact and I give women lots of
support to help them work through their fears. Once you start saying that they
can do it, they get lots more confident and they do it.
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