Resh­ma Ra­goonath

There was thun­der­ous ap­plause yes­ter­day in the au­di­to­ri­um of Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas, when Pres­i­dent's Medal 2010 win­ner, Brad Chat­ter­goon, was recog­nised for achiev­ing T&T's top scholas­tic ac­co­lade. The 18-year-old St Au­gus­tine youth, speak­ing with the T&T Guardian fol­low­ing a brief cer­e­mo­ny to ho­n­our the school's 20 schol­ar­ship win­ners, ad­mit­ted he was not one to "pound the books". "I wasn't the most in­ter­est­ed in study­ing out­side of class," Chat­ter­goon said.

He said: "I put all the ef­fort with­in the class­room, more than out­side, and every stu­dent should pay at­ten­tion in class and work on the weak­er points rather than the stronger ones." Ad­vis­ing stu­dents to set their hopes on ob­tain­ing a schol­ar­ship, the teenag­er added: "You have to be an all­rounder in your sub­jects, not just four ones and a two or some­thing. Try and do well over­all, aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly." Chat­ter­goon said he did not set his hopes on win­ning the Pres­i­dent's Medal be­cause it seemed "un­rea­son­able, since on­ly one per­son in the coun­try could get it.

"I set my­self a goal to get an open schol­ar­ship and I worked to­wards it and I got it. I just got some more along with it," he added. Prais­ing his moth­er, Sabeha, for her un­wa­ver­ing sup­port, Chat­ter­goon said she played a vi­tal role with her guid­ance. He said: "My moth­er al­ways put her chil­dren first and their ed­u­ca­tion, most im­por­tant­ly, be­fore every­thing else. "So def­i­nite­ly I would ad­vise par­ents to take a very de­tailed in­ter­est in their chil­dren." Chat­ter­goon is the tenth stu­dent to cop the Pres­i­dent's Medal for Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, Ch­agua­nas. De­scrib­ing it was a "nice ac­com­plish­ment," Chat­ter­goon said he was hum­bled by the feat.

He said he in­tend­ed to ap­ply to for­eign uni­ver­si­ties to pur­sue a de­gree in math­e­mat­ics or physics. The cer­e­mo­ny was a dou­ble cel­e­bra­tion for the school as spe­cial recog­ni­tion was paid to vice-prin­ci­pal Jef­fery Jag­birs­ingh who re­tired yes­ter­day af­ter 34 years of ser­vice. Jag­birs­ingh said cop­ping 20 schol­ar­ships and the Pres­i­dent's Medal un­der his tenure was a "per­fect send-off."