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Saturday, January 25, 2025

Mothers take the spotlight at UWI graduation

Vale­dic­to­ri­an pays trib­ute to the ‘pow­er of mom’

by

455 days ago
20231028

AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Dur­ing Lane Cameo Amichan’s six-and-a-half-minute vale­dic­to­ry speech, the loud­est ap­plause came when he looked to the stands and per­son­al­ly thanked his moth­er for her sac­ri­fice and hard work, which al­lowed him to grad­u­ate with first-class ho­n­ours.

The tu­mul­tuous ap­plause came from fel­low par­ents and served as a re­minder that al­though those in blue gowns were cel­e­brat­ing the crescen­do of aca­d­e­m­ic rigour, the path to their suc­cess was paved by those who cared for them.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny on Thurs­day, Amichan, who grad­u­at­ed with a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence En­gi­neer­ing in Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er En­gi­neer­ing, ex­plained why he sin­gled out his moth­er.

“My mom is the bread­win­ner in my life, I could not come to uni­ver­si­ty with­out her. She makes the meals, she works, she does the work at home, she is the one that mo­ti­vates us,” Amichan said with his emo­tions at times mak­ing him pause to col­lect his thoughts and catch his breath.

Amichan ad­mit­ted that his stud­ies were com­pli­cat­ed by the fam­i­ly’s fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion and cred­it­ed his moth­er and a na­tion­al schol­ar­ship for en­sur­ing his ed­u­ca­tion did not suf­fer.

“My dad would have lost his job some­time dur­ing my school life at Na­pari­ma (Boys’) Col­lege, and from that point for­ward, he worked on and off so my mom would be the one to con­stant­ly work and pro­vide for the fam­i­ly. We would have moved from where I would have orig­i­nal­ly lived at the age of 12. Hon­est­ly, we did not have much space, me and my broth­er would have to share a room, share a bed,” Amichan said with a ner­vous and slight­ly em­bar­rassed laugh.

“To man­age do­ing CSEC, CAPE and UWI in that lit­tle con­fined area, I am some­body who has all my books spread apart, to man­age do­ing that in that small, con­fined space was not easy,” Amichan added.

He sought to urge oth­ers not to see their fi­nan­cial lim­i­ta­tions as a pre­de­ter­mined sign that they can­not achieve their goals.

“As they say, the poor get poor­er, and the rich get rich­er right? When you come from where I came from, some­times you feel dis­ad­van­taged, like you can­not move ahead in life but that is not the case. Once you have that mo­ti­va­tion and that pas­sion, you can do any­thing that you want to do, so don’t let your cir­cum­stances pull you down. Have your pas­sion and just do it,” Amichan shared.

But while stand­ing proud­ly with his seem­ing­ly shy moth­er next to him dur­ing the in­ter­view, an­oth­er grad­u­ate was seen chas­ing a tod­dler who saw the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ Sport & Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre (SPEC) as his play­ground.

The young moth­er, who grad­u­at­ed with her de­gree in Law, aims to in­spire her son Ay­den, in the same way Amichan’s moth­er mo­ti­vat­ed him.

Rathi­na Ju­man ex­plained that she got preg­nant with Ay­den dur­ing her uni­ver­si­ty stud­ies. How­ev­er, her choice to per­se­vere with her pro­gramme was to en­sure she could be a role mod­el for the child.

“It was re­al­ly hard, but I want to show him that any­thing is pos­si­ble, no mat­ter what you can do it, and I want to be his biggest in­spi­ra­tion some­day,” Ju­man said, glanc­ing down at her son, who at that time was tug­ging at her hand, clear­ly show­ing his readi­ness to leave af­ter the two-hour cer­e­mo­ny.

How­ev­er, Ju­man said it was not an easy jour­ney and there were many times when the sim­ple choice would have been aban­don­ing stud­ies.

“It was so tough, this de­gree is three years, and I took al­most four to five years to com­plete it be­cause I be­came preg­nant in 2020 and I work full time as well. “Then I got a di­vorce, all of that mixed up, but if you have sup­port­ive par­ents any­thing is pos­si­ble. I took a year off be­cause I was re­al­ly sick with the preg­nan­cy and at times I did want to give up, es­pe­cial­ly with the di­vorce. But I moved back in with my par­ents and I think the way they grew me up, my moth­er is one of the strongest peo­ple I know and you don’t stop, you keep go­ing and I want to set a good ex­am­ple for this lit­tle one,” Ju­man said.

She un­der­scored that bal­ance is key and moth­er­hood does not mean the aban­don­ment of your own goals and as­pi­ra­tions.


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