Bal­anc­ing her stud­ies with her spir­i­tu­al growth has worked out well for Cas­san­dra Khan, who has won the Pres­i­dent's Medal, Gold for out­stand­ing per­for­mance in the 2018 Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate ex­am­i­na­tions.

The 17-year-old Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School pupil, who lives with par­ents Nan­cy and Haroun Khan at Ra­goo Vil­lage, Welling­ton Road, Debe, ex­pressed ju­bi­la­tion at her award.

In an in­ter­view Wednes­day, Khan said she was able to ac­com­plish every­thing through the bless­ing of Je­ho­vah God and his son Je­sus Christ.

"My Fa­ther al­ways said I can do all things through Christ, who strength­ens me. It is a verse from the Bible which is my per­son­al mot­to. I know that I was able to ac­com­plish this be­cause God has blessed me," Khan told Guardian Me­dia.

Hav­ing writ­ten 11 sub­jects, in­clud­ing Span­ish, French, Chem­istry, Physics, Bi­ol­o­gy, Maths and Ad­di­tion­al Maths, Ge­og­ra­phy, Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, Eng­lish Lan­guage, as well as Dance, Khan was able to score 11 dis­tinc­tions in all sub­ject ar­eas. She didn’t study Span­ish and French in school but pur­sued the sub­jects on her own, do­ing pri­vate lessons with Span­ish teacher Sher­ry Rago­b­ar-Toolsie and her daugh­ter Can­di.

Khan said she was al­ways in­volved in ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties, but not­ed that rather than dis­tract­ing her from her stud­ies these ac­tiv­i­ties strength­ened her.

At the Di­a­mond Evan­ge­lis­tic Cen­tre, Khan taught Mod­ern Dance, sang in the choir and par­tic­i­pat­ed in dra­ma. She said her fa­ther Haroun Khan, who head­ed a Sun­day School for decades in Ra­goo Vil­lage, honed her skills as a dra­ma stu­dent.

"I was stunned when I found out that I won the Pres­i­dent Medal, Gold. It was some­thing I prayed for and I worked hard for it. I am just thank­ful that I was able to make my fam­i­ly and my vil­lage proud," she said.

Asked what she want­ed as a re­ward for her ac­com­plish­ment, Khan re­spond­ed, "I al­ready have every­thing. I have a moth­er who is very en­cour­ag­ing and who prayed with me and for me al­ways. I have a fa­ther who taught me how to per­se­vere even when times get tough. I don't need a re­ward. I al­ready got what I want­ed and that was to make them proud."

Khan is cur­rent­ly in Low­er Six and plans to pur­sue a ca­reer in geo­chem­istry.

"I want to do lab­o­ra­to­ry work in the oil in­dus­try as well as a study of the earth. I love ge­og­ra­phy," she ex­plained.

She al­so thanked her teach­ers at Na­pari­ma Girls’ High for mo­ti­vat­ing and as­sist­ing her.

Her moth­er Nan­cy said she got the news of her daugh­ter's suc­cess from Na­pari­ma Girls’ High prin­ci­pal Car­olyn Bal­ly-Go­sine, who al­so made the an­nounce­ment to the school body dur­ing an as­sem­bly ear­li­er Wednes­day.

"I start­ed scream­ing. My hus­band was dumb­found­ed and speech­less. We were so ex­cit­ed and hap­py," Nan­cy said.

Bal­ly-Go­sine said Khan was al­ways a dili­gent and hum­ble stu­dent. She said the school had per­formed well in all sub­ject ar­eas at CSEC, as well as the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE) Unit One and Two lev­els.

"We had 100 per cent pass­es. At the CSEC lev­el, we had 24 places in the mer­it list­ing for the re­gion. Our stu­dents are do­ing well across the board in al­most every sub­ject area,” Bal­ly-Go­sine said.

“Cas­san­dra was an all-rounder. She was great in her bal­ance of sub­jects and she was able to ac­com­plish a lot. She de­serves the Pres­i­dents Medal.”

She said Khan was part of the school's mu­si­cal, the Sound of Mu­sic, as well as a par­tic­i­pant at San­fest and the Na­tion­al Dance Fes­ti­val.