This year’s top SEA per­former re­vealed her for­mu­la for suc­cess on Mon­day ad­vis­ing pupils prepar­ing for next year’s ex­am to not on­ly study hard but al­so find time to play.

Through­out the prepa­ra­tion for the ex­am, Siri Vad­la­mu­di said she did not feel any pres­sure be­cause she man­aged her time well.

The for­mer Grant Memo­r­i­al Pres­by­ter­ian School pupil was speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day CNC3 Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme.

“It wasn’t that dif­fi­cult. I just planned my day and used ap­pro­pri­ate times to study and bal­ance it with my play­time,” she told host Hema Ramkissoon.

Siri dreams of one day be­com­ing a doc­tor, just like her par­ents but for now, she just looks for­ward to “gain­ing more knowl­edge and meet­ing new peo­ple” at Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School when school re­opens.

With all said and done, maybe Siri was just liv­ing up to the teach­ings of her moth­er whom she said al­ways told her: “Don’t wor­ry about the re­sults and just put your best ef­fort.”

She urged the many oth­er stu­dents who may not have been sat­is­fied with their SEA re­sults that while they may not have per­formed aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, it’s okay. She said they “might be bet­ter at some­thing else be­cause every­one has their own tal­ents.”

And for those writ­ing the ex­am next year, she ad­vised that they “work hard and be ded­i­cat­ed but al­so have a well-round­ed life by join­ing ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties.”

This year’s ex­am­i­na­tion was crit­i­cised by par­ents and stu­dents as be­ing “too dif­fi­cult.”

But her suc­cess did not come overnight.

Her fa­ther, Dr Sri­navasaro Vad­la­mu­di said it took hours of hard work from Siri and his wife.

“It was my wife re­al­ly. I have to ac­cept that. She sits with her on a dai­ly ba­sis and we just go through the school books,” he said.

He said as par­ents, he nor his wife felt any pres­sure but “were mon­i­tor­ing her per­for­mance from class to class and es­pe­cial­ly in Stan­dard Five, we would re­al­ly spend time with her.”

While she stud­ied every day, her fa­ther said she al­so found the time to en­joy life and play with their neigh­bour’s chil­dren. He al­so said they would even go out to the movies and spend time among fam­i­ly.