At 37, life had already given her enough reasons to leave an old dream where it was.

She had a career. She was married. She was raising three children, and her youngest was still a baby. Going back to university would mean returning to lectures and examinations while carrying responsibilities that most undergraduate students had yet to experience.

Still, there was something she had wanted for years: to become a medical doctor.

Nearly two decades after first sitting for the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board examination, she registered for JAMB again. This time, she was no teenager trying to decide what adulthood might look like. She was an adult choosing to start again.

Her eventual admission to study Medicine at the University of Lagos opened what would become one of the most demanding periods of her life.

Before that moment, her journey through adulthood had already required patience. After getting married, she waited five years before welcoming her first child. By the time medical school began, she was a mother of three and working full-time as a laboratory technician in a hospital.

Pursuing Medicine meant taking study leave from work and adjusting family life around one of the most demanding university programmes. Her youngest child was not yet a year old when she started.

There was also an unavoidable difference between her and many of the people sitting beside her in lecture halls. Most were considerably younger. Her classmates reportedly began calling her “Mummy”, a nickname that captured the age gap but also the unusual nature of her journey.

What followed were years of lectures, clinical training, examinations, motherhood and the everyday responsibilities waiting at home after school. There was little about the path that could be described as convenient.

In 2022, that decision made at 37 finally reached the moment she had been working towards. She graduated from the College of Medicine, University of Lagos, as a medical doctor.

Her achievement was also supported at home. Her husband, Abiodun Odukoya, provided support through the years of study, helping make it possible for her to balance the demands of medical training with raising their family.

There is an easy temptation to reduce stories like hers to the familiar phrase, “age is just a number.” Her experience says something more practical than that.

Starting later can be difficult. Responsibilities do not disappear simply because someone decides to pursue a dream. Children still need attention, bills still have to be paid, examinations still have to be passed and years of work still have to be put in.

She did all of that anyway.

At 37, she went back to JAMB, years later, she walked out of the University of Lagos as a doctor.

And somewhere between those two moments is a story about what can happen when a dream is delayed, but never completely abandoned.