From the Principal’s Desk – 18 April, 2019
Dear Parents,
At this week’s Prize-Giving Assembly, our DP 1 students received their Cambridge IGCSE Certificates, as well as awards for outstanding achievement in individual subjects.
In my address, I spoke about what enables some students to achieve academically and others not and mentioned the following four points:
1. SELF IMAGE
It all begins in your mind – in your thoughts – in what you think about yourself. Do you think you can do well at school? Or do you think you haven’t the ability to achieve good marks?
Henry Ford said: “Whether you think you can or think you can’t – you’re right”
Success depends on your belief in yourself: each of you have infinite potential to achieve anything you put your mind to.
Remember our first assembly of the term – in having a “Growth Mindset” instead of a “Fixed Mindset”; that our brains grow when they are challenged and that each of us has the capacity to achieve.
Don’t let others influence your belief in yourself: your friends, your family, the media.
As Eleonor Roosevelt: “No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent”
Believe in your worth, in your unique abilities and talents and rise to the call to be extraordinary.
2. EXTRAODRINARY GOALS
“Ordinary people believe only in the possible. Extraordinary people visualise not what is possible or probable, but rather what is impossible. And by visualising the impossible, they begin to see it as possible.” (Cherie Carter-Scott)
I hope that each of you have an extraordinary goal for your life – that you have considered what career you would like to pursue; what you would like to achieve in your life; what legacy you would like to leave.
As you attend school each day, keep this goal in mind, so that you are reminded of what you are working towards, that what you are learning and the marks you are achieving are all contributing to the realisation of that goal.
Steven Covey, in his book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” encourages us to “Begin with the end in mind”.
3. TAKE ACTION
Jo Di Maggio said: “If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, and you don’t do it – it won’t happen”
Get working … today. Focus in class; do your homework; study consistently through the year; ask for assistance from your teachers; get extra lessons in areas you need; do more than what is required.
Get your priorities right: studies first, then recreation and relaxation.
4. PERSISTENCE
Or GRIT (remember I mentioned it last week)
Work hard at your studies consistently: every day, every week, every month, every year.
Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is therefore not an act, but a habit.” Make working hard a habit, and you will achieve.
So students, 4 simple principles:
– Believe in yourself
– Have extraordinary goals (and keep them in mind each day)
– Take action
– Persevere – have GRIT – until excellence becomes a habit.
I conclude with words of Phillips Brooks:
The ideal life is in our blood and never will be still. Sad will be the day for any man when he becomes contented with the thoughts he is thinking and the deeds he is doing – when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was meant and made to do.
Kind regards,
Gavin Budd