RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Com­ing from a sin­gle-par­ent house­hold, Sum­mer Lash­ley and her moth­er Dar­lene Renn faced fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties jug­gling do­mes­tic and school re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, some­times run­ning short of funds to pay for lessons.

But de­spite every­thing, they banked their faith on God, and their ef­forts paid off when Lash­ley re­ceived her CAPE re­sults yes­ter­day, se­cur­ing eight Grade Ones in Bi­ol­o­gy, Caribbean Stud­ies, Chem­istry and Physics.

The Debe Sec­ondary stu­dent, who was in­volved in a range of ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties at school, re­called her joy and re­lief when she col­lect­ed her re­sults.

“I was in shock to be very hon­est,” Lash­ley said.

She ad­mit­ted that the ex­am­i­na­tions had been dif­fi­cult, with some pa­pers prov­ing more chal­leng­ing than she ex­pect­ed.

“The pa­pers came a lit­tle twist­ed, a lit­tle un­ex­pect­ed, but it’s like on­ly by God’s grace and His faith­ful­ness, I was able to per­se­vere and I’m just tru­ly thank­ful for that,” she said.

For Lash­ley, how­ev­er, the great­est bat­tle was not nec­es­sar­i­ly the ex­am­i­na­tions.

It was push­ing through the fa­tigue and weari­ness that came with months of study­ing.

Her jour­ney was made more chal­leng­ing by the fi­nan­cial re­al­i­ties of grow­ing up in a sin­gle-par­ent home.

She said there were times when mon­ey was tight and pay­ing for lessons be­came dif­fi­cult.

But Lash­ley said her teach­ers un­der­stood her sit­u­a­tion and con­tin­ued to help her.

She sin­gled out teach­ers Ja­son Sam­my and Ker­win Springer of Stu­dent Hub for their sup­port.

Her moth­er, Renn, al­so played a crit­i­cal role in her jour­ney.

Renn, a po­lice of­fi­cer at­tached to the Wit­ness and Vic­tims Sup­port Group at the Gas­par­il­lo Po­lice Sta­tion, of­ten deals with peo­ple go­ing through trau­mat­ic and dif­fi­cult ex­pe­ri­ences.

Lash­ley said she knew the emo­tion­al toll her moth­er’s work would take on her, and there­fore want­ed her own achieve­ments to re­mind her moth­er that her sac­ri­fices were worth­while.

“I think just suc­ceed­ing in school and mak­ing her proud, it will re­lease her stress,” Lash­ley said.

The 19-year-old grew up in La Ro­maine, an area of­ten viewed as a vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ty.

But Lash­ley re­fused to al­low her sur­round­ings to de­fine her fu­ture.

She said her ex­pe­ri­ence had taught her that a per­son’s start­ing point did not have to de­ter­mine their des­ti­na­tion.

Lash­ley al­so cred­its Debe Sec­ondary with help­ing to shape her out­look and char­ac­ter.

She re­mem­bers her first day at the school fond­ly, say­ing she im­me­di­ate­ly felt wel­comed by the teach­ers and staff.

She par­tic­u­lar­ly praised prin­ci­pal Romeo Gun­ness for cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment in which stu­dents were en­cour­aged to de­vel­op spir­i­tu­al­ly and pos­i­tive­ly.

Lash­ley said her faith al­so helped her deal with mo­ments when she felt over­whelmed.

“When I’m sad or what­ev­er, I would lis­ten to wor­ship mu­sic, and I would al­so pray about it,” she said.

“I would al­so cry about it. I’m hu­man. I would have a lit­tle crash-out some mo­ments. But I would rec­ol­lect my­self and just go to God about it.”

She de­vel­oped a strict study rou­tine, plan­ning what she want­ed to ac­com­plish each day.

Her strat­e­gy in­clud­ed fo­cus­ing on three sub­jects a day, com­plet­ing home­work, do­ing prac­tice ques­tions from text­books and work­ing through past pa­pers.

She al­so watched ed­u­ca­tion­al videos and en­cour­aged oth­er stu­dents to dis­cov­er the learn­ing meth­ods that worked best for them.

She said dur­ing the ex­am­i­na­tion she re­mind­ed her­self to re­main calm and trust in what she had stud­ied.

“Put in your work, be strate­gic, have faith in God, and every­thing will be all right,” she said.

Lash­ley, who al­so se­cured sev­en Grade Ones and one Grade Two at CSEC, now has her sights set on med­i­cine.

How­ev­er, she be­lieves her fu­ture may hold some­thing even greater.

“I think, of course, there’s a big­ger plan be­yond that,” she said.

And for oth­er chil­dren grow­ing up in sin­gle-par­ent homes or vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties, Lash­ley has a sim­ple mes­sage.

She urged them not to al­low their cir­cum­stances to de­ter­mine their fu­ture.

Lash­ley said her eight Grade Ones rep­re­sent months of sac­ri­fice, a moth­er’s de­ter­mi­na­tion, teach­ers who of­fered sup­port when mon­ey was scarce and firm faith that with God, any­thing is pos­si­ble.