By Victor Ochieng’
vochieng.90@gmail.com
It is the ravenous desire of every student to become. In my pep talks, I always ask the question: How many want to become? Of course, most of them lift up their hands, but also ask: Become what? For someone can become anything in this world of birth and death.
It is good to desire to become on a positive note. In a school setting, students are preparing to become the best. Becoming means they think about careers and world of work. It is imperative they envision becoming successful professionals or entrepreneurs. Becoming is good. It comes with glory and glamour.
Girls in schools should not be disturbed by their physical looks per se. For a well-educated girl is beautiful. Girls, who know this fantastic fact, concentrate more on their books than looks. Beauty of brains is the real deal.
Every boy must believe, behave and become. Belief takes faith and foresight. Faith is a strong belief. Students who want to become must believe in God Almighty, believe in themselves and believe in people that prop them up.
In Hebrews 11, we read about (wo)men who became great because they believed in God; they walked in faith. In Hebrews 11:1 we read: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen.” Believing in God, must be succoured with belief in oneself. It is futile to believe in Deity and have a low opinion about self.
Students, who want to become great, must obey people who matter in their lives. They have to obey the comely counsel of parents, teachers and mentors. Chinua Achebe, the father of African prosaic said, “Whoever pays respect to the great pays his way to greatness.”
Foresight is the ability to see the future. It cannot be seen by the two egg-like oval eyes. Seeing the future takes the eyes of the mind – vision – the art of seeing the invisible. Solomon writes in Proverbs 29:18: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
Believe. Behave. Become. The middle one carries great heft. Students can believe, but if they refuse to behave, they will fail to become. Students go to school to learn. Learning is change of behaviour and attitude. Attitude is equal to mind-set plus beliefs.
What is the Son of the Lake trying to imply? Without change of behaviour and attitude, no learning takes place. Behaviour takes diligence and discipline. Diligence is a virtue – good deed. Laziness is a vice – bad deed. When students become lazy and lackadaisical, they mess and miss the chance to shine as stars.
Back-breaking labour bears fruits. Hard work pays. It is the hardworking farm who gets a bountiful harvest. Hard work never kills, but hard life kills. Thomas Edison said, “Genius is 99% perspiration, and 1% perspiration.”
Students who want to become academic giants must toil and moil. There is no magic wander that entices academic success. Success follows doers, not observers and talkers. A horse that pulls cannot kick. A horse that kicks cannot pull.
Nature gives birds food, but does not put it in their nest. Nothing comes through a silver platter. Milton rose every morning at 4:00 AM to pen Paradise Lost. It took Noah Webster 36 years to collate and collect content to compile in Webster’s Dictionary.
Discipline and knowledge are inseparable. Proverbs 12:1 says that whoever loves discipline loves knowledge. Jim Rohn observed, “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments.” Discipline can be explored as: self-discipline, self-drive, external discipline, mind-level discipline and academic discipline.
Self-discipline is self-conquest: the ability to overcome temptations of the body, wild desires and unnecessary appetites. Self-discipline is attained through self-control, delayed-gratification and consistent goal-oriented action. Harry Truman put it aptly, “In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves. Self-discipline with all of them came first.”
Self-drive is personal initiative: Doing things without being pushed. Serious Students do not wait to be pushed like wheelbarrows. They have the inner drive. They dream. Dare. Do.
External discipline is the respect they accord to others; explored as humility and obedience. Humility is the spirit of meekness, which is not weakness. Students who become the best, do not succumb to hubris – excess self-confidence and pride. Obedience focuses on submission to authority, which attracts the favour factor in all spheres of life.
Mind level discipline focuses on controlling what gets into the mind through thoughts, eyes and ears. The mind obeys the GIGO Principle — Garbage in; Garbage out. Input is directly proportional to output. That is why young people must choose the movies to watch, and music to listen to.
Academic discipline focus on things that make students evince academic excellence. Study Skills, Methods or Habits, play a pivotal role in this special sphere. Study Habits is the best collocation to pick. Habits are repeated patterns of behaviour. The Science of Habits is a Common Course in the School of Success. It plays an integral role in the art of becoming. In the distant past, Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher observed, “We become what we repeatedly do; excellence is not an act, but a habit.”
Students, who want to evince excellence, must be prone to useful study habits. They must have a Positive Mental Attitude (PMA). Academic materials or tools must be in place. They must have well-written notes. Build a strong reading culture. Build the attention and concentration span. Be good stewards of time. Time is managed by setting priorities right, owning an all-inclusive time table and a coming up with a what-to-do-list on daily basis.
Students should read notes. Read core course books. Forms 1 and 2 students should read class readers spelt out in the Orange Book by KICD. Forms 3 and 4 should read the KCSE set texts. For reading to be productive, students should focus on: textual marking or annotation, re-reading or repetition and note-making.
The writer is an editor, orator and author
