I saw the news recently about the girl who graduated Salutatorian. I did not watch the video. I knew it would strike too close to home. The incident reminded me of a similar incident a long time ago.
I was 12 and in Grade 6. I was graduating in a few weeks, and there was official “rumour” that I would be the class Valedictorian. Many were surprised, and some were openly questioning the decision. I was a transferee and joined the class at 4th grade. My classmate, a brilliant young boy, had been consistently 1st honours since Grade 1, and many had expected him to graduate class Valedictorian. The news that he might not created an uproar.
It was tense. Our teachers met again and again to review our grades. I could sense it, and my mother knew about it. My teachers were under a lot of pressure.
One day, my mother called me aside and said: “Tell you class adviser that it is okay for you to be the class Salutatorian.” And so that day, I went to my class adviser and told her just that: that my mother said that I did not have to be the Valedictorian, that it was okay for me to graduate Salutatorian.
Of course, the teachers did not have any of that and I graduated class Valedictorian anyway. But that incident left an impression in my young brain: that honours are not the end-all and the be-all, that it does not make you who you are. You are who you are, and honours do not make you a better person, nor the lack of it make you any less the person that you are.
After graduation, my mother told me: “You have to prove that you deserve it. Do not put your teachers to shame. They chose you. You must show the public that they did not make a mistake.”
And so I went to High School and graduated Valedictorian again. I went to college and graduated Magna cum Laude from Political Science and then Cum Laude from Law.
But then one day my mother called me aside again and said: “Life is not determined by the grades you get in school. You must perform well in life.”
And that was when I truly got it. School is just that: school. And the honours we get in school are just that: honours in school. I am not saying they are not important, or that they are insignificant. What I am saying is that they are given for a performance already done. They do not in any way determine how we will do in the future, much less in life.
Sure, we would like to be acknowledged for having done well in class. We would like to be called First Honours if we think that we studied hard enough to get that recognition. But if we do not get it, how big a deal should it be?
My mother taught me that it should not be all that big a deal, because our success in life is not determined by whether or not we graduate with honours. I would have been the same person whether or not I graduated with honours. I would have made the same mistakes, and would have learned the same lessons. I would have been the same kind of friend, and I would have loved in exactly the same way.
What is success after all? Success is what you make out of your life. And what you make out of your life depends on what you do after you graduate – not before. It is determined by the decisions you make after you leave school, and has nothing to do with the honours you got when you graduated, or the lack of it.
If my mother had been here, she would have been proud to say she taught me well.
May's Blog 