Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo is en­cour­ag­ing pupils, start­ing sec­ondary school in Sep­tem­ber, to com­mu­ni­cate with their par­ents or oth­er trust­ed adults about their feel­ings and to choose their friends wise­ly.

“You have to find a way to deal with what we adults call your in­ner con­flict. What worked for me was talk­ing to my par­ents about what I was feel­ing,” she stat­ed.

The Pres­i­dent gave this ad­vice to the 2025 grad­u­at­ing class of Man­zanil­la Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School dur­ing her fea­ture ad­dress on Wednes­day. She re­mind­ed the pupils that they don’t have to car­ry their con­flict­ing emo­tions alone. The Pres­i­dent said while they may not al­ways un­der­stand the ad­vice their par­ents or guardians give them, it usu­al­ly comes from a good place.

Her Ex­cel­len­cy al­so mo­ti­vat­ed the out­go­ing Stan­dard Five pupils to fo­cus on learn­ing.

She said choos­ing the right friends was equal­ly im­por­tant. Kan­ga­loo told the grad­u­at­ing class that there were far too many sto­ries of young peo­ple be­ing led astray by oth­ers they thought were their friends.

“Some of these sto­ries have trag­ic end­ings, so you need to be very care­ful about the friends you choose. When I was grow­ing up a pop­u­lar say­ing was ‘friends will car­ry you but they won’t bring you back’,” Kan­ga­loo said.

Re­flect­ing on her school days, Kan­ga­loo said that when she was grow­ing up, there were no dis­trac­tions like cell­phones and the in­ter­net—but ad­mit­ted that if they had ex­ist­ed then, she too might have found it hard to con­cen­trate.

“In my time I found dis­trac­tions in pitch­ing mar­bles with my friends and lim­ing with them un­der the trees in our school­yard and most of all talk­ing non­stop dur­ing class,” she shared.

Kan­ga­loo told the pupils that when she and her hus­band Se­nior Coun­cil Ker­wyn Gar­cia vis­it schools and in­ter­act with stu­dents, she is of­ten asked if she knew she would grow up to be Pres­i­dent. Kan­ga­loo said the an­swer is al­ways a “hard no.”

Still, she as­sured the pupils that once they fo­cus on work, op­por­tu­ni­ties will come.

The Pres­i­dent added that one of the most im­por­tant things chil­dren need to re­alise is that all the choic­es or steps they take will de­ter­mine the kind of life they will have when they be­come adults.

“It is a dif­fi­cult thing to un­der­stand at your age. If you choose to work hard and fo­cus on learn­ing, chances are that you will al­ways be reach­ing new heights. If you choose not to work hard and not to fo­cus on learn­ing, chances are you will end up hav­ing a dif­fi­cult life where won­der­ful op­por­tu­ni­ties don’t open up to you in the way they could have,” the Pres­i­dent ex­plained.

Kan­ga­loo told the 20-plus pupils that the jour­ney would not al­ways be easy but she re­mind­ed them they were not alone.

“There will be times when you will feel un­sure or when things don’t go the way you hoped but re­mem­ber even the tallest moun­tains are climbed one step at a time ... you have peo­ple in your cor­ner, your par­ents, teach­ers, friends, and sib­lings who be­lieve in you and want to help you suc­ceed,” she said.