RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

For Na­reesa Ram­path, suc­cess is not about fol­low­ing the path laid out by tra­di­tion, but hav­ing the courage to cre­ate your own.

The head girl of Na­pari­ma Girls’ High School shared her jour­ney to suc­cess af­ter se­cur­ing eight Grade Ones in her Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE) ex­ams in So­ci­ol­o­gy, Per­form­ing Arts, En­tre­pre­neur­ship and Caribbean Stud­ies.

Re­call­ing her jour­ney, Ram­path said she once imag­ined her­self be­com­ing a pae­di­a­tri­cian. She chose sci­ences, built her sec­ondary school ca­reer around it and as­sumed she was fol­low­ing the nat­ur­al route to be­com­ing a doc­tor.

But as she ap­proached the end of Form Five, Ram­path said she be­gan ques­tion­ing whether med­i­cine was tru­ly the life she want­ed.

“I was think­ing, do I want to live my life like this? I am an em­pa­thet­ic per­son, and as a doc­tor I would have tak­en it on. I asked my­self, do I want to con­tin­ue do­ing this?” she re­called.

The an­swer was no.

Al­though she loved sci­ence, Ram­path switched sub­jects and de­cid­ed to pur­sue per­form­ing arts, train­ing in life skills that she felt would one day be im­por­tant for what­ev­er ca­reer she even­tu­al­ly chose.

To­day, Ram­path said she plans to pur­sue Law, while keep­ing the per­form­ing arts close to her heart.

“I would study the law, but in my free time I would do per­form­ing arts as a pas­sion,” she said.

Her par­ents, Harnar­ine Ram­path, a po­lice of­fi­cer, and her moth­er, Nali­ni Ram­path, sup­port­ed her de­ci­sion, while her teach­ers—Fari­ah Hy­atali, Vic­ki Sadeek, Tim­o­thy and Karen Bal­ly, Nao­mi Ado­nis-Wood­s­ley and Daisy Ann Ous­man—all ral­lied around her.

Ram­path said that while she had this sup­port, too many stu­dents were still pushed to­wards the tra­di­tion­al pro­fes­sions, par­tic­u­lar­ly med­i­cine and law, with­out be­ing ex­posed to the breadth of op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able to them.

She said the pres­sure to have every­thing fig­ured out while still in sec­ondary school is un­fair.

“Some­times I think faith from the peo­ple around you is the biggest cat­a­lyst for suc­cess,” Ram­path said.

She ad­mit­ted that tak­ing Per­form­ing Arts as a sub­ject was a ma­jor leap be­cause she had nev­er con­sid­ered it part of her aca­d­e­m­ic fu­ture.

She said she learned that much of what lim­its young peo­ple is not a lack of abil­i­ty, but the bound­aries they place around them­selves.

“We put our­selves in a box, and we think this is what every­body’s do­ing, so I have to con­form,” she said. “You can be dif­fer­ent. It’s okay to be dif­fer­ent.”

She re­called dis­cov­er­ing songs by ca­lyp­so­ni­ans such as the Mighty Spar­row and Lord Kitch­en­er and re­al­is­ing how much of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cul­tur­al her­itage young peo­ple can over­look.

“We just leave the lo­cal things to per­ish,” she said.

She be­lieves the coun­try has an abun­dance of tal­ent and cul­tur­al trea­sures, but young peo­ple first need to recog­nise their val­ue.

“I think if young peo­ple could see the mer­it in their own coun­try and the beau­ty of their coun­try and cap­i­talise on the op­por­tu­ni­ties, I think we would be a lot bet­ter off,” she said.

Ram­path hopes to be­come one of those cul­tur­al am­bas­sadors.

With plans to trav­el, she said she does not in­tend to leave her Trinida­di­an iden­ti­ty be­hind.

“Every time that peo­ple go abroad, they try to as­sim­i­late,” she said. “I want to in­tro­duce peo­ple to what we have here be­cause our cul­ture is amaz­ing.”

She be­lieves for­eign­ers can al­so be­come am­bas­sadors for Trinidad and To­ba­go when they ex­pe­ri­ence the coun­try’s cul­ture and share it with oth­ers.

Asked to share ad­vice with oth­er stu­dents, Ram­path said every­one should em­brace their unique traits and find con­fi­dence in their abil­i­ties, nev­er lim­it­ing them­selves to one field.

She said tech­nol­o­gy is fast eras­ing tra­di­tion­al ca­reers, so stu­dents should look to­wards the fu­ture with op­ti­mism as they em­brace every op­por­tu­ni­ty.