Grad­u­ates of the St Au­gus­tine High School (SAGHS) are hop­ing they can live up to the ad­vice giv­en to them to­day at their grad­u­a­tion on Thurs­day.

Grad­u­ates Naila Badre-Ma­haraj and Amelia Kel­ly, who are cur­rent­ly first-year Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies med­ical sci­ences stu­dents at Mt Hope, said they in­tend to be agents of change in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

St Augustine Girls’ High School students, from left, Shaneil Peters, Dana Phagoo and Danielle Pierre show off the plaques they received for attaining eight ones in exams.

NICOLE DRAYTON

In an in­ter­view af­ter the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, Badree-Ma­haraj told the T&T Guardian, “I want to do a lot of vol­un­teer work. Med Sci al­ready is a very grat­i­fy­ing field, you know? So I’m re­al­ly ex­cit­ed and look­ing for­ward to those op­por­tu­ni­ties.”

She added: “It fills your heart, hon­est­ly, it is very grat­i­fy­ing. See­ing the dif­fer­ence you can make in some­one’s life, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter the flood. In Mt Hope we had a flood dri­ve…it’s been re­al­ly life-chang­ing to see how your small change, how it can im­pact these peo­ple’s lives.”

Kel­ly, who ini­tial­ly had dreams of be­com­ing a chef, has big­ger as­pi­ra­tions and now en­vis­ages her­self work­ing with the Unit­ed Na­tions and Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders af­ter she fin­ish­es med­ical school but al­so do­nates her en­er­gy to help­ing oth­ers.

“Even in med school there are all these clubs we take part in like Roter­act, Lead­er­ship Coun­cil – they all do a lot of vol­un­teer work.”

Gabrielle Bal­go­b­in, who is cur­rent­ly tak­ing a year off from study­ing to write the SAT ex­am­i­na­tion, mean­while hopes to get in­to the field of com­put­er sci­ence.

“I think that’s a fast grow­ing field and I want to go in­to cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty and cryp­tocur­ren­cy.”

Asked what she in­tends to do af­ter ac­com­plish­ing this, she said, “Well I think Trinidad needs it so I’m hop­ing to come back here and open up my own firm, of­fer con­sul­tant ser­vices, es­pe­cial­ly to all the banks and gov­ern­ment sec­tors be­cause you see peo­ple like Sco­tia­bank al­ways get­ting hacked and I think cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty is a field that peo­ple in Trinidad don’t re­al­ly ac­knowl­edge too much and we re­al­ly need to get with the times and the sys­tems.”

Sush­mi­ta Sam­sun­dar, who won five awards on the day, said she in­tends to get in­to bio-med­ical surgery or med­i­cine and hope­ful­ly do re­search in­to ge­net­ics with a fo­cus on can­cer and cell bi­ol­o­gy.

A section of graduates during the ceremony.

AISTO ALVES

Speak­ing to the stu­dents at the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, School Su­per­vi­sor III Joy Grif­fith told the young women, “If it’s one thing you re­mem­ber when you leave here this morn­ing, is each one of you has some­thing spe­cial to of­fer that will ben­e­fit Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“I am de­pend­ing on you girls to use what you have re­ceived at St Au­gus­tine Girls’ High School to solve some of the ills of our na­tion. You have what it takes to bring out the en­gi­neer­ing de­signs to al­le­vi­ate flood­ing…to do what it takes to en­sure every home gets a de­cent home liv­ing.”

Al­so speak­ing to the stu­dents was GDM Ltd. di­rec­tor Neisha Ghany, who gave the stu­dents the hope to ac­com­plish their goals. “In to­day’s world, you have to agree that much of the ‘glass ceil­ing’ has been shat­tered by those who have gone be­fore. So many of the fixed no­tions of ca­reer and suc­cess have been de­bunked that you are now freer than ever to choose your own way,” Ghany said.

“Make some qui­et time to search your mind and your heart and see what thoughts, be­liefs and per­spec­tives de­fine you cur­rent­ly. Choose the ones you want to keep and move past those that are hold­ing you back.”