AN ADDRESS TO THE 2013 GRADUATING STUDENTS BY DR K.C.K.NWANGWA, PRINCIPAL OF ASTEC. Ladies and gentlemen graduating from ASTEC today, I want to salute you for your doggedness and the focus which has enabled you to truck on to the end of your six years of secondary schooling. From when you came in as 10 or 11/12 years-olds six years ago, many of you have grown physically and mentally. You have imbibed the social and spiritual norms of this Adventist environment and we are ready to bid you ‘Go-forth’. Before you go, I will like to give you some counsels as I have always done to your predecessors during every graduation ceremony. First, I will like to make it known to you that it is not by accident that we decided to call this event a Send forth/ Graduation ceremony. Rather, we are deliberately attempting to bring two points to your focus. One, being a secondary level school, we have prepared you to go forth and attain higher academic levels without looking back. Secondly, we are confident that each of you here today has successfully completed the series of learning required in secondary school and will pass the Senior Secondary Certificate Examination taken without coming back for any make-up. This is our reason for graduating you from secondary school. While in this school, I wish to remind you that you have been provided with an education that has armed you with critical academic competence and a unique spirit of honesty and hard work that is second to none. In all the Chapel talks, Special Assemblies, Various briefings in your hostels by the Students’ Services Staff, Counseling sessions by the counseling department and all the other interactive sessions; you have obtained a good dose of lessons that will carry you far in life. It won’t be long before you realize it, whether you are moving from here to do further studies, which is my earnest desire for each of you, or you are going into the job market, which I am not praying for now concerning any of you, people will surely spot you out of every group unless you forget what you have been taught and what you have been through here. My dear Sons and Daughters, I want to share some quotes I find relevant with you at this point: Throughout your career people will try to distract you. Some will scream at you, others will say things behind your back, and a few feral animals will literally try to throw their stiletto heel in your lane and trip you. Keep your eyes straight ahead and just run your race.” - Sharin Alfonsi - CBS Correspondant Nothing could be more true for each of you as you leave the four walls of ASTEC. It takes to keep your focus, but it pays handsomely to do so. Friends will come; supposed well-wishers will crowd around you; unsolicited teachers of doom will come to help you ‘shine your eyes’; love-pretenders who are really jealous of you will come to initiate you into societies and cults of doom. Remember, human beings in their carnal nature are roundly selfish, and will not jump up to give you the best they do not have, so, when people come to dangle before you the virtues they do not have, beware, they are distracters. ‘Keep your eyes straight ahead and just run your race’. Always mind the business you are doing. Honesty and industry which has carried you thus far pays, no matter what may appear like the triumph of laziness and all forms of unmerited success and favor that you may meet when you leave here. When you work hard honestly and achieve success, your success will always shine and outshine all unmerited successes. While unmerited success may prove difficult to defend when the chips are down, any success you worked for will always stand the test of every time. So, you all should hold on to honesty and industry in whatever you do and wherever you find yourself. As graduating students of ASTEC, an Adventist institution, you have an inalienable mandate to strive to and sustain the urge to excel which has already been inculcated in your subconscious and conscious mind while a student here. You can say with every certainty that you have come thus far, not by idling away your time and opportunity but by aspiring to and actually working hard towards achieving this excellence we have come to celebrate in a way. ASTEC has ground you and you have trucked along thus far because you did not loose your focus on excellence. You cannot afford to forget this now. You should always remember that in ASTEC, you have been trained to ‘aim at higher heights and push the limits of resilience’ to achieve excellence and more excellence and aim always at more and more excellence. You have not been groomed for the middle, you are a person that has been carved in ASTEC for the top and nothing less than getting to the top in whatever you will find yourself doing will pay for the training and grooming you have received. Haven been groomed and nurtured in this way in ASTEC, you have a mandate to go out and shine, shine the light so that the world around you where ever you are can see the ASTEC uniqueness in you. You should shine so that you can transform places of study, higher schools, other students and work colleagues. You should see your training here as one which gives you the impetus to shine so that you can impact society for positive change. You are an ambassador of a great and unique institution, you have a testimonial that has value: locally and internationally and you are a representative of the excellence that ASTEC and by implication, Adventist Education is known for at all times. Guard it, treasure it, and be focused on keeping the vision of ASTEC aflame. As you graduate from ASTEC, always be mindful of the truth that you have been brought up as a change agent that will define the shape of excellent achievement and hard work today and in the future in our society. Always keep in your view that: you are not a half-measure man or woman: you are a full excellent measure person. You are a person made to always reach for the highest goals. This frame of mind must always be in you. As you leave, never forget: “Nothing is impossible except the one that has never been tried”, and you know that there is hardly anything that has never been tried by somebody. “Never give up on anything because you think it is hard”. Problems/obstacles are resolved by facing them and not by running away from them, so, when you meet obstacles on your way, pause, ask God for a way out and move on in faith. Learn how to take obstacles as fresh challenges, not reasons to give up. “Never strive to get what you need by all means, fair and foul, but always strive hard enough to achieve to your maximum potential”. ”Always challenge yourself to greater achievement by telling yourself, ‘Since somebody was able to achieve it and I am somebody, I CAN achieve it too, by God’s grace”. Make Jesus your focus, never neglect the daily study of His word, for that is where the greatest source of courage and strength can be got. There is no amount of ‘I am a big boy/girl’ that can help you to make progress in life if you turn your eyes away from the Lord. Go to Him always, ask for His assistance all the time and you will always find a way out with His help. I will want you to note this: from now, in all your academic and future pursuits, you will discover that in most cases, you may not have anybody monitoring and controlling you and your actions the way it has been done while you were in this boarding school. You may celebrate this as freedom, and actually it is. But always bear in mind that freedom has a price, an expensive one at that. When you manage it well, it can help you to exercise your ability to great limits, take your own actions and learn from them. But, if you are not careful, you may take this freedom as a license to do as you like without counting the cost. I advise you as I have always done: “freedom: being left to take your own actions means being left to take responsibility for those actions”, so, when you are allowed to do what you want; remember that you will give account for whatever you do. Therefore, always count the cost of your actions before you take them, especially when you are not being supervised. We, the staff of this school, have done the best we can as human beings to give you what we believe is one of the best that a secondary school can give to her students. You have been prepared reasonably to face the challenges of life after secondary school, the ball is now on your court, play it well. May I urge you to go forth in faith without fear, the world is not a bed of roses we know, but many people have been able to weather the storm and come out successful. If you do your best, you too will come out successful. Remember always that: Master Jesus is always available and ready to go before you, you must turn your eyes upon Him, hold on to Him, if you do, you will find out that He is the most dependable and most reliable friend and guide. With Him, no one can hinder you.
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 13:00:20 +0000
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