Passion Keeps You Going • Rita Okoroafor
(Energy Resource Engineering PhD Student, Stanford University || CA USA)
“Find out who you are and what you really like, because your passion is what keeps you going. People ask me, how do I manage a life, with three children and a PhD program at Stanford. But if I did not love my children, if I did not love studying, and if I did not love research, I wouldn’t be able to. Your passion drives you.
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It had been a lifelong dream to get a PhD. But I didn’t have the finances to start with, and I lost my dad at an early age, so separation from my family was not something I thought about early on. I was in Nigeria most of my career working as a petroleum engineer. I had a lot of responsibility, but my knowledge was limited. The things I wanted to learn required being on campus to study. I thought about going back to school. I’m almost 40 and I have three kids — two below school age — hence it was a very tough decision. My husband and I went back and forth. But one day he said, I promise to support you in your dreams and I know this is something you’re passionate about. Now I am in California with our children, and he is working in Nigeria to support us. The difficult part was leaving my beloved husband. It’s a huge sacrifice he made to be away from his wife and children.
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Some of my competence from the oil and gas industry can be transferred to geothermal resource engineering. I study enhanced geothermal systems — these systems are hot but are unable to flow naturally, so we create pathways and inject water to extract the heat, which is converted into electricity using a geothermal power plant. My priority after my PhD is a career in academia. Wherever the opportunity lies, that’s where my family and I will go. But I am also very passionate about writing — I’ve published two books. One is called ‘Against the Perfect Will’ and the other is ‘Morning Does Come’. They are motivational books for young teenagers, drawn from personal experience and experiences of people I’ve come across. After Stanford I think I might write more — I have some stories in the pipeline I haven’t finished.”
