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Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Ruqayyah Scott

Terras Irradient - Lighting up the Land

by

Women Empowerment Contributor
941 days ago
20220710

Mere days ago, 9000 stu­dents or more were de­liv­ered their SEA grades, that threw them in­to the abyss of de­spair. This af­ter our stu­dents have ex­pe­ri­enced tur­bu­lent aca­d­e­m­ic years dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and were al­ready cop­ing with nu­mer­ous tri­als, aca­d­e­m­ic and oth­er­wise.

WE took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to counter this anx­i­ety and an­guish felt by par­ents and stu­dents, and hope they rec­og­nize they are not alone in these chal­leng­ing times.

WE be­lieve this deep dive with the trail­blaz­er Ruqayyah Scott of­fers not on­ly promise, and mo­ti­va­tion, but shares light and wis­dom as they nav­i­gate the next steps in their jour­ney at this cru­cial time.

Let’s in­tro­duce this phoenix…

Ruqayyah Scott em­bod­ies the mot­to of her Al­ma Mater, Cou­va East Sec­ondary School - Ter­ras Ir­ra­di­ent - Light­ing up the Land.

She has been work­ing with many civic so­ci­ety & gov­ern­men­tal or­ga­ni­za­tions and youth-led en­ti­ties that en­able her to ex­er­cise her pas­sions - lead­er­ship, eco­nom­ics, pol­i­tics and diplo­ma­cy. This re­cent grad­u­ate from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies with First Class Ho­n­ours has al­so served as a two-time Youth Par­lia­men­tar­i­an. She is al­so the Head Train­er of the Mod­el Unit­ed Na­tions, mem­ber of the Ro­taract Club of Cen­tral Port of Spain, for­mer Pres­i­dent of the UWI Eco­nom­ics So­ci­ety and a for­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go Youth Am­bas­sador. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Ruqayyah delved deep in­to eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­vel­op­ment is­sues across the Caribbean at the Heath Eco­nom­ics Unit, Cen­tre for Health Eco­nom­ics, UWI St Au­gus­tine.

What is your WHY?

Sim­ple, I want to see this world be a bet­ter place. Where eq­ui­ty is prac­ticed through­out, where every­one has ac­cess to the same op­por­tu­ni­ties, when ba­sic ne­ces­si­ties are af­ford­ably avail­able and where no one at all is left be­hind. From since child­hood, I was al­ways deeply dis­turbed when I saw any form of in­equal­i­ty or dis­crim­i­na­tion tak­ing place and al­ways want­ed to do some­thing to fix it or at least make it bet­ter. I re­mem­ber be­ing told so many times “but that’s not di­rect­ly af­fect­ing you, why should you care? What’s hap­pen­ing in oth­er coun­tries isn’t hap­pen­ing in Trinidad & To­ba­go, so why should you care?” My an­swer to those ques­tions would al­ways be…so what? We are all part of this plan­et, what hap­pens in Kenya should be our con­cern, what hap­pens in Brazil should mat­ter, what hap­pens in In­dia is im­por­tant. This is pos­si­bly what birthed my in­ter­est in Glob­al De­vel­op­ment, Eco­nom­ics & In­ter­na­tion­al Af­fairs.

Grad­u­at­ing with First Class Ho­n­ours from UWI, share to us what stands out in this aca­d­e­m­ic jour­ney?

Let’s start at the be­gin­ning, Savonet­ta Pri­vate school, the pri­vate pri­ma­ry school that my par­ents sac­ri­ficed to in­vest in my ear­ly aca­d­e­m­ic de­vel­op­ment. Here I was ex­posed to the per­form­ing arts (The­atre & Mu­sic), Arts & Crafts from as ear­ly as 5 years old. In fact, my ear­li­est mem­o­ry as a child, is on a stage, dressed as a bee (that was my big part lol) de­liv­er­ing my 2 lines at the top of my lungs! I was al­ways ex­posed to pub­lic speak­ing in pri­ma­ry school which I har­nessed through­out my en­tire jour­ney which has led me to now be­ing able to speak in front of a crowd, on tele­vi­sion or in front of a cam­era. As I made my way in­to Sec­ondary School, I con­tin­ued in the per­form­ing arts, and be­ing the out­spo­ken and cu­ri­ous teenag­er, al­ways an­swer­ing ques­tions in class, al­ways vol­un­teer­ing for ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties, al­ways rep­re­sent­ing my high school out­side of school. I per­se­vered through these ex­pe­ri­ences and con­tin­ued be­ing the in­quis­i­tive out­spo­ken child, which hon­est­ly is one of my proud­est traits.

The word Eco­nom­ics alone brings me so much joy. I chose this area of Busi­ness Stud­ies in form 4, af­ter I saw the ti­tle “Econ­o­mist” in a UWI pam­phlet at ca­reer day in form 3. I tru­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the na­ture of the field and what it seeks to ac­com­plish- to make the world a bet­ter place, the per­fect fit for me. I kept this pas­sion for eco­nom­ics alive by con­stant­ly fill­ing my­self with in­ter­na­tion­al news, books, videos on eco­nom­ics as ear­ly as 13 years old. I har­boured this love and pas­sion for eco­nom­ics and ap­plied for it at UWI St Au­gus­tine where I im­mersed my­self in mul­ti­ple ac­tiv­i­ties out­side of aca­d­e­mics that would en­hance my jour­ney to­wards be­com­ing an Econ­o­mist. Luck­i­ly, with the sup­port of my par­ents, my men­tors, loved ones and my faith in God, I was able to grad­u­ate with First Class Ho­n­ours, my BSc Eco­nom­ics with a Mi­nor in En­vi­ron­men­tal Eco­nom­ics.

Tak­ing you back to your SEA re­sult, de­scribe those mo­ments and your de­ci­sions at that time?

Like every oth­er child, I too want­ed to pass for my 1st choice. I re­mem­ber on the day of re­sults, I was one of the last few stu­dents to re­ceive my re­sults af­ter know­ing that all of my friends passed for their 1st choic­es. My last name Scott, start­ing with “S” meant the an­tic­i­pa­tion was longer than oth­ers.

I re­mem­ber my prin­ci­pal say­ing, Cou­va has two 1st choice schools, you passed for the oth­er one, Con­grat­u­la­tions! It was in that mo­ment I learned that I had passed for my 2nd Choice, Cou­va East Sec­ondary. My heart sunk, all of my best friends were go­ing to an­oth­er school and yet again, I was the odd one out. My par­ents were wait­ing out­side and I cried my heart out to them, whilst they as­sured me that they were very proud of me.

To be quite frank, I felt as if I dis­ap­point­ed every­one, my­self, my par­ents, my friends and my fam­i­ly mem­bers. I still re­mem­ber, fam­i­ly mem­bers telling my par­ents “That school eh good, trans­fer she to a “bet­ter” school!” My par­ents asked me, do you want a trans­fer? In that mo­ment, I said NO…firm­ly…I said I passed for Cou­va East for that rea­son and I will at­tend Cou­va East, this was where I was meant to be. So said, so done! The best 7 years, filled with mem­o­rable friend­ships, lessons and growth. An in­sti­tu­tion that has af­ford­ed me so many op­por­tu­ni­ties, nur­tured my aca­d­e­m­ic cu­rios­i­ty, sup­port­ed me in my var­i­ous ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties and so much more. My 7 years at Cou­va Sec were some of the most mem­o­rable 7 years of my life and it was Cou­va East that trained me so well, that I was able to bring home the 1st ever Na­tion­al Schol­ar­ship in my fam­i­ly! Ter­ras Ir­raident For­ev­er! The BEST school and most pres­ti­gious school in my eyes, the #1 Gov­ern­ment School in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

What lessons stay with you from over­com­ing that per­ceived dis­ap­point­ment?

The on­ly per­son re­spon­si­ble for your suc­cess is you. No in­sti­tu­tion, no amount of mon­ey or lack there­of, no oth­er 3rd per­son is re­spon­si­ble for you, oth­er than you! Had I not made up my mind to per­se­vere through the chal­lenges I em­barked, I would not have been where I am to­day. You have to de­cide how you want your life to be, and then act ac­cord­ing­ly. Chal­lenges will be con­stant, but you have to learn how to ac­cept your cir­cum­stances, de­ter­mine what you are in con­trol of and work on those. It makes no sense try­ing to con­trol things that are sim­ply out of your hands.

My oth­er ma­jor les­son was “Trust the process”.

Every­one is ex­act­ly where they are meant to be. Trust that where you are now is what was meant for you and find your rea­son­ing and pur­pose in that. Have faith that things will un­fold favourably. It’s the law of at­trac­tion, think pos­i­tive­ly and pos­i­tive things will hap­pen!

What’s your ad­vice to par­ents?

Just be­cause your child did not pass for their 1st choice, or many of the times YOUR 1st choice (Yes par­ents, I’m speak­ing to you), does not mean they have failed. For those, whose chil­dren have scored be­low 50%, take this as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther pour in­to your chil­dren rather than pun­ish them. Aca­d­e­mics is not for every­one, and every child learns dif­fer­ent­ly and has var­i­ous in­ter­ests. Your prob­lem is with SEA it­self, its struc­ture and the struc­ture of the Sec­ondary School sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

I would love to say, it doesn’t mat­ter what school a stu­dent pass­es for, they all have the same op­por­tu­ni­ties. But the re­al­i­ty is, this is far from the truth. There are schools with x3 the num­ber of re­sources as oth­ers, there are schools with strong Alum­ni, PTAs and so much more. The fact is some schools do have more re­sources that give stu­dents the ul­ti­mate ad­van­tage, but imag­ine, if all Sec­ondary Schools across Trinidad and To­ba­go were eq­ui­tably equipped, with an abun­dance of op­por­tu­ni­ties, ad­e­quate in­fra­struc­ture and fi­nances, es­sen­tial­ly if all schools were equal, would you even care about which school your son/daugh­ter passed for? My mes­sage here is this, our so­ci­ety has cre­at­ed this pres­tige/non pres­tige school cul­ture and a lot of the times, it’s the par­ents who hold on­to these ideals much more than the stu­dents them­selves, be­cause at the end of the day…most of us end up in the same uni­ver­si­ty, in the same class­room, strug­gling the same ex­act way re­gard­less of which high school we at­tend­ed.

So, my ad­vice to you is, if your child passed for a school where you know much more is need­ed, be that par­ent who gives more to your child so that they thrive. And this doesn’t re­fer to fi­nances on­ly, sup­port your child, get them in­volved in ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties, lis­ten to them, help them where you can. Your child needs you now, more than ever. Do not pun­ish your chil­dren due to the fail­ure of our state to pro­duce an ef­fec­tive ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. Your chil­dren need you!

What’s your words of en­cour­age­ment to stu­dents em­bark­ing on re­me­di­al class­es or mak­ing those de­ci­sions on their next steps?

If this is the de­ci­sion you made, be gen­tle with your­self and try not to pun­ish your­self. Put your best foot for­ward at your class­es and ex­ams but al­so take the time to ex­plore oth­er in­ter­ests to tru­ly find your call­ing and pas­sion. Aca­d­e­mics may be for some, but it is not for all, and there is ab­solute­ly no need for every hu­man be­ing to be a staunch aca­d­e­m­ic.

Be you, do what you love and do it well!


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