Rhon­dor Dowlat

Se­nior Re­porter

rhon­dor.dowlat@guardian.co.tt

Don’t miss a day of school.

This was the ad­vice giv­en to the grad­u­at­ing class of Pointe-a-Pierre Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School by CNC3 news an­chor Ria Ram­bal­ly when she de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at their grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny at Cara Suites Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Clax­ton Bay, on Fri­day.

Ram­bal­ly, who shared her ex­pe­ri­ences to un­der­score the im­por­tance of school and stud­ies, said: “When I was younger, my moth­er used to in­sist I at­tend school every sin­gle day.

“There was no stay­ing home. Now I just thought she want­ed to watch her tele­vi­sion in peace but what I didn’t re­alise then was that she was cre­at­ing a cul­ture of con­sis­ten­cy, ded­i­ca­tion, dis­ci­pline, per­sis­tence, and com­mit­ment, all cru­cial fac­tors of suc­cess.

“A very pop­u­lar Amer­i­can film di­rec­tor Woody Allen said that 80 per cent of suc­cess in life is just show­ing up and I know that sounds sim­ple but there are many fac­tors that will con­spire against you, the main one be­ing fail­ure.”

Ram­bal­ly said in pri­ma­ry school she al­ways placed first in tests and be­lieved that school was easy.

“By the time I got to sec­ondary school, I was over­ly con­fi­dent and re­laxed but I had no idea I was now sit­ting among the best and bright­est in cen­tral Trinidad. I fo­cused on mak­ing friends and was more wor­ried about be­ing liked in­stead of do­ing my work.

“It wasn’t long be­fore I was at the bot­tom of the class and so it re­mained un­til al­most the end.

“Now it’s not that I didn’t like school. I just didn’t know how to learn and fo­cus on my work. I didn’t fig­ure out the right tech­nique and it wasn’t long be­fore I start­ed to feel like an un­der­per­former. Par­ents’ Day was the worst. My moth­er col­lect­ed end­less com­plaints, the main one be­ing, ‘Ria talks too much’.

“By the time I did A-lev­els I had failed my first ma­jor ex­am, Ac­counts. I was dev­as­tat­ed and couldn’t get in­to UWI and start­ed to think life was over for me,” she said.

“But my dad in­ter­vened and said, ‘You’re not so great with num­bers. Why don’t you try Jour­nal­ism at COSTAATT in Port-of-Spain?’

“Tak­ing his ad­vice I en­rolled, away from all my friends and my com­fort zone. I was scared but kept at it. Be­fore I knew it I found some­thing I en­joyed and start­ed to ex­cel.

“I of­ten won­der, if I didn’t fail that sub­ject and take his ad­vice where would I be now?”

Ram­bal­ly told the grad­u­ates set­backs and fail­ures are not signs of de­feat but “step­ping stones on the long, wind­ing path to suc­cess.”

“It’s mo­ti­va­tion. That’s the dri­ving force be­hind all goals and the de­sire to act. If you are self-mo­ti­vat­ed and mo­ti­vat­ed by oth­ers you will be more in­clined to en­dure till the end and achieve suc­cess,” she said.