RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

For Kirsten-Jade Ram­per­sad, sewing and fash­ion were more than week­end ac­tiv­i­ties. They were ways to clear her mind, recharge and re­fo­cus on her stud­ies, help­ing her ex­cel with eight Grade Ones, each with a Grade A, in her CSEC ex­am­i­na­tions.

The St Au­gus­tine Girls’ High School stu­dent said ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties helped her nav­i­gate the pres­sure of ex­am­i­na­tions and emerge with Grade Ones in Math­e­mat­ics, Eng­lish, Ad­di­tion­al Math­e­mat­ics, Physics, Chem­istry, Bi­ol­o­gy, Ge­og­ra­phy and French.

“Things like fash­ion, sewing, play­ing the steel­pan, and bad­minton helped me un­wind and re­lax af­ter a long day of work. I strong­ly be­lieve this bal­ance was a main fac­tor in be­ing able to re­tain in­for­ma­tion and get­ting the en­er­gy to study,” she said.

Ram­per­sad said her achieve­ment was built on months of prepa­ra­tion, dis­ci­pline and a will­ing­ness to sac­ri­fice some of the things she en­joyed.

Prepar­ing long be­fore the ex­am­i­na­tions, Ram­per­sad said she be­gan pac­ing her­self rather than leav­ing the work­load un­til the fi­nal weeks.

She used flash­cards to test her mem­o­ry and, as the ex­am­i­na­tions drew clos­er, made sure to de-stress.

“I be­lieve it’s im­por­tant to spread out the work­load so it doesn’t be­come over­whelm­ing too close to the ex­am and af­fect your per­for­mance,” she said.

Still, the jour­ney was not with­out its chal­lenges.

Ram­per­sad said one of the hard­est parts was giv­ing up valu­able time with fam­i­ly and friends to con­cen­trate on her stud­ies.

“Though I may look back and think that it was worth it, in the mo­ment it’s def­i­nite­ly hard to make sac­ri­fices,” she said.

She ex­plained that there were al­so mo­ments when the amount of work ahead seemed daunt­ing.

“At many points I be­came stressed be­cause of the amount of work I had to cov­er in such short time frames, but re­gard­less, I knew I had to per­se­vere,” she said.

Rather than al­low­ing the pres­sure to over­whelm her, Ram­per­sad took short breaks to do the things she loved.

“I em­broi­dered, sewed, read books, watched movies, played with my pets, played steel­pan and spent time with friends and fam­i­ly. It’s im­por­tant to not feel alone and have peo­ple to lean on and vent to dur­ing hard times,” she said.

Prayers al­so helped her find calm be­fore the ex­am­i­na­tions.

“On the day of ex­ams, I found that pray­ing be­fore I took the test helped me to re­lax my nerves and fo­cus,” she said.

Ram­per­sad cred­its much of her de­ter­mi­na­tion to her par­ents, Maris­sa Gowrie and Ker­ry Ram­per­sad, who en­cour­aged her to strive for ex­cel­lence with­out putting pres­sure on her.

She re­called her fa­ther spend­ing en­tire week­ends re­vis­ing with her and pa­tient­ly ex­plain­ing ques­tions un­til she un­der­stood them.

Her grand­par­ents were al­so im­por­tant pil­lars, with her pa­ter­nal grand­fa­ther, Ken­neth Ram­per­sad of Tabaquite, teach­ing her the val­ue of in­tegri­ty and her ma­ter­nal grand­moth­er, Cyn­thia Gowrie of Tu­na­puna, shar­ing her love of learn­ing.

Be­yond aca­d­e­mics, Ram­per­sad said she made the most of her school life, par­tic­i­pat­ing in clubs, house ac­tiv­i­ties and field trips while build­ing last­ing friend­ships.

Her in­ter­est in fash­ion and sewing al­so ex­pand­ed in­to en­tre­pre­neur­ship, with Ram­per­sad sell­ing some of her hand­made pieces at a school small-busi­ness ex­po.

Now, with eight dis­tinc­tions be­hind her, she is look­ing ahead to pur­sue en­gi­neer­ing.

“Hope­ful­ly, with the ex­pand­ing ca­reer paths in the world, I will be able to in­cor­po­rate fash­ion and en­gi­neer­ing.”

For oth­er stu­dents prepar­ing for ex­am­i­na­tions, her ad­vice is to start ear­ly, find what works and make time to de-stress.

“Stress can have very se­ri­ous ef­fects on your men­tal health so take every­thing one day at a time,” she said.

She al­so urged stu­dents to main­tain a healthy bal­ance be­tween work and life.

To par­ents, she of­fered an equal­ly im­por­tant mes­sage: sup­port rather than pres­sure.

“It’s im­por­tant to un­der­stand every­one is dif­fer­ent and learns in dif­fer­ent ways,” Ram­per­sad said.

She be­lieves par­ents should help chil­dren dis­cov­er study tech­niques suit­ed to their in­di­vid­ual learn­ing styles while en­cour­ag­ing them to de­vel­op their own mo­ti­va­tion.