The Oxford Dictionary describes persistence as doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success. It is a lesson many people take a long time to learn, but 17-year-old Ethan Crichlow seems to possess a natural ability to persevere. Crichlow completed his Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC)?exams in June and obtained a total of 11 passes of the 12 subjects he did. He may seem like an ordinary teenager, but Crichlow's success comes after a lot of hard work and stubbornly sticking to his belief in himself. "Ethan was homeschooled up until his Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) exam," said his mother Laura Crichlow, who took on the task of homeschooling all three of her children. "My husband is a stickler for family life and a long time ago he met a missionary who had homeschooled his kids. The missionary showed him how it resulted in better family life and higher moral standards in the children, and we made the decision to do the same with ours." She said a lot of people thought they were crazy, as with no formal training as an educator, she taught each of her children until it was time for them to enter secondary school. "I am passionate about my kids. I followed the curriculum from schools and got curricula from the United States and combined them to make a programme for the kids. hen Ethan was at the Standard Four level I added SEA past papers and we used that to guide us," she said.
The teenager did the SEA exam and passed for Belmont Boys Intermediate Secondary, a school not far from the family's home. "I had three kids and as much as I felt capable of teaching them at the primary school level, I felt the secondary school level would have been too difficult. I couldn't teach him Spanish or Physics," Laura admitted. After two years, Crichlow transferred to St Mary's College and decided to pursue business subjects with the intent of following in the footsteps of his father. However, after he fell ill toward the end of his final term in third form and had to undergo an appendectomy, he decided to pursue a career in medicine. He attempted to switch from business subjects to sciences. "I can't really explain it but I knew after leaving the hospital that I wanted to be a doctor and help people. When I was leaving, the doctor said 'see you later' and I felt like he meant not as a patient but as a fellow doctor," Crichlow said. He told his parents about his decision and his mother met with the dean to attempt a switch in subjects. However, the dean denied the request, stating that the classes were full. In fourth form Crichlow was studying nine business-oriented subjects. He asked his parents for permission to do additional subjects. "When he decided to do the subjects on his own, we spoke to the dean. The dean said Crichlow would not be able to handle the workload. He was already doing nine subjects and to add three more would be 12. When the dean said that, Ethan's dad and I weren't too excited about the idea," she said.
Eventually, she relented.
"He just kept pressing us. He was annoying with it," she recalled. "It was scary to me, though. I kept asking myself, 'How is he going to do this?' He had school, then after school he had classes, then after classes there were more classes, which finished around 9 pm." He started extra classes in Biology, Physics and Chemistry in September 2010 and wrote his first Cambridge exams at the end of Form Four in May. He got Bs in Physics and Biology and a D in Chemistry.
"Honestly, my end-of-year exams in school weren't great. I didn't pay enough attention because I was focused on the exams that carried more weight for me, the GCE exams," he said.
The following January, he repeated the three subjects, with the addition of Mathematics.
He got distinctions in Physics and Mathematics, a one in Chemistry and a two in Biology.
Four months later he did his other eight subjects, passing all, except for English Literature, and getting a distinction in Accounts.
"I can't do what he did," his mother said.
"He was so disciplined. I don't know who he gets it from but he is so driven. I am praying he gets a scholarship after his A-Levels so he can go where he wants to go."
As for Crichlow, he is prepared to do whatever it takes to go after his dream and study medicine, so he can help people just like he was helped by a doctor when he was ill.