Exams are now officially upon us and the stress levels are higher than normal for most of our students. Please make sure that, in amongst the clear focus on revision and last minute catching up, your children continue to have sufficient sleep every night, remain physically active and maintain a well-balanced diet to keep them healthy and alert.
Unfinished Business
Construction on the Foreshore Freeway Bridge in Cape Town ended in 1977. Unfinished, and still no decision as to what should be done with the project, which ceased due to budget constraints and has never been taken up since. So now it is a tourist attraction rather than what it was intended to be, a solution to the city’s traffic needs.
Bruce Lee, responsible for raising the profile of martial arts through film, started work on Game of Death in 1972. Intended to be his definitive expression of the martial arts he came to embody, he postponed production to work on Enter the Dragon. Sadly, Bruce Lee died soon after that, and his ultimate production went unfinished.
The Ryugyong Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea, at 105 storeys, was to have been the tallest hotel in the world. It remains unfinished due to cost blowouts and poor structural integrity.
Ran out of money. Overcome by adverse circumstances. Consequences for poor decisions or inappropriate shortcuts. There are almost as many reasons that things go unfinished, large and small, as there are unfinished things. Yet finishing is a critical part of being successful in life.
It is vital that we learn how to persevere through challenges and disappointment to attain our goals, how to redirect when original goals are genuinely unattainable, and how to identify the difference. We need these skills as adults, but they aren’t bought off the shelf in a supermarket: we develop them while growing up, and as parents and guardians we have a responsibility to provide our children with the opportunities to become resilient members of their communities.
If you can do the very best that you can do
At whatever you do
Then you will become the very best you can be
Whatever that may be.
Here at the School, students tackle a range of academic subjects, sport, extra-curricular activities, and social dynamics that provide both opportunity to excel and opportunity to persevere! The subjects and activities that we find challenging or less enjoyable, as well as those for which we are more gifted, can be approached with an attitude that says “I will give this my best and complete it absolutely as well as I am able” … then, whatever the outcome, we know that we’ve done the best that can be done and can be proud of the result. This is one of our primary goals: not that everyone will get an ‘A’ in every subject, or make the first team and win all the games during the season, but that the learning process will result in perseverance, a can-do approach to life, resilience and achieving the best that can be achieved in whatever is done.
I am convinced that if we get this focus right, then the desired good results will follow! Because if our students give their best in all that they do, then they will reap the reward of the best results they can achieve.