ENJOY YOUR STUDIES NOTWITHSTANDING YOUR PERFORMANCE

Enjoying your studies as a student is a great gain notwithstanding your performance, area of interest, or how your intelligence seems to be rated now.

The greatest test for a student’s attitude toward studies comes when all his/her effort seems to be in vain. You are trying to study hard (maybe following some experts tips), but still your performance remains dismal.

Your teachers and parents seem not to recognize your “humiliated” resolve and devotion: “You are a disappointment”, is their remark. The easiest path seems to be clearly marked: “Give up!”

Thus you no longer enjoy your studies. You are tempted to feel inferior. Your enthusiasm and inner motivation becomes elusive. You feel to be a grasshopper walking amongst giants.

Your self-esteem too, is threatened; thus participating in class or group work becomes a nightmare. You just feel to let the “geniuses” answer the questions posed by the teachers.

In such a time as this, one needn’t to resign from his/her studies. But, to let such nagging performance be is or her teacher on how to perform better. This is where enjoying your studies notwithstanding your performance becomes the way forward.

The love of books (reading) can explode the dormant mental faculties, which excellent performance might not accomplish.

Albert Einstein, the great physics genius wanted to drop out of school from the problematic Mathematics that had become a total disaster notwithstanding his strict teachers and keen parents he had.

When he shared his experience with his uncle Jacob, he gave him an insight that opened a new chapter in his scholarly work. He encouraged him to read biographies of great mathematicians from the available journals.

This adventure gave Einstein a real picture of the fathers of his problematic subject, mathematics: He started loving them and embraced their spirit. Thus he started enjoying not only mathematics, but physical sciences too. When he failed his entrance exams at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School, in Zurich he tenaciously repeated, securing his place the following year. At the age of 26 years, Einstein had discovered Quantum theory and the law of relatively, winning the physics Nobel Prize in Physics in the year 1921. What a leap!

Student needs to come in terms with failure. Failure should be regarded as a lesson on how one should not do it again. It calls one to evaluate his/her methods of study. Not resorting into any dishonest means of any kind to “perform better”.

Here is your challenge! Give me one Genius who never failed in his lifetime. Isaac Newton wasn’t the best boy in his class up to grade six. Thomas Edison was expelled from school after spending three years without being able to read or write. His teachers concluded that he was “addled”. Churchill was a no performer throughout his school time. Beethoven spent a huge portion of his time practicing his compositions nightlong.

In fact geniuses distinguish themselves by perspiring, than being inspired. They mastered how to turn failure into stepping-stones for their success.

Indifference coupled with laziness towards studies is a great undoing in most students. It’s like having a fertile land that you are not laboring to dig – it can yield anything.

Was it not the mother of Ben Carson the author of "Think Big," who encouraged him to read two booked a week: his medical potential would have gone a waste.

This is a testimony that majority of our pupils and students who are performing poorly, even, in national exams KCPE and KCSE might be dormant geniuses. Who might die without their potential flowering.

History is a replete of people who never had an opportunity to school; yes, some were declared failures by examining bodies but later turned the tables.

Shakespeare his recorded to have spent, merely seven years in school. Abraham Lincoln spent few months in school from the penury life he was born in. But his resolve to acquire knowledge by borrowing books within the walking locus enabled him to posses a prudent mind. Alexander Graham was an errand boy in the railway company, yet he is the discover of the telephone.

You’re never late to hand yourself a new leaf in your studies. It was at the age of 40 years that Benjamin Franklin started performing scientific experiments thus discovering that lightning is electricity and inventing the lightning rod.

There is a common thread of perseverance that runs through the fabric of our academic predecessors. They persevered and remained put when they had an excuse to quite. Robert Frost labored for 39 years before he sold his first volume. Henry Ford made 871 models before landing in his satisfaction. Mozart sat in a lifeless, frigid room with woolen socks in his hands for warmth while he wrote his genius Music. He died from TB at 35 years.

There is a proverbial myth that some people are brainy – challenged. Some, yet, believe that they are made for certain subjects; Arts and not Sciences and vice versa without any attempt or interest in these subjects. This myth instigates fear and plants a negative attitude in students.

As someone has said, the human mind is complex and broad, if well used it can accommodate all that is important since it’s creation up to date.

Students should not fear to do their best. You can be a scientist and writer cum theologian and poet at the same time. The sky is never the limit; there are other solar systems to be explored.

This is the secret every student should master: to enjoy his/her studies notwithstanding the present performance.