World famous poet Maya Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that life always offers us a second chance to prove yourself.”
And that’s exactly what Gabriel Claverie did after he failed the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) exam last year.
“I felt sad, I felt depressed for a lil bit,” Claverie said on Wednesday.
The then Sacred Heart Boys’ Roman Catholic School student, along with his mother Kizzy Danclar, decided that it was best for him to re-sit the exam.
“The pain was hard to explain, the way I saw my mom and family crying about it, it really hurt me,” he said.
But Danclar’s attempts to re-register her son at Sacred Heart Boys’ were unsuccessful.
So, she reached out to the principal of Excel Beetham Estate Government Primary School, which is in her community and Claverie was accepted.
“This was my next option, it has always been my mother’s choice to send him to this school,” Danclar said.
“I said to myself I must make them and make myself proud,” Claverie added.
His second try at the exam provided the results he wanted.
Claverie did not only pass for his first choice of St Mary’s College but was the top performing student at his new school.
He said doing this was not an easy task and took a lot of dedication and focus.
“I was always productive. I used to do past papers even when my mom did not tell me to,” he said.
His mother confirmed this and said she always knew he had the potential to excel.
“He had made me extremely proud,” she said
She has been carrying this pride with her since she saw his results online on July 1.
“I couldn’t sleep I was nervous…something kept bothering me to open it,” Danclar said.
She said half hour later, she awoke Claverie and told him of his results.
“I was like thank God and after that, I said ‘mom I told you I would have done it’,” Claverie said.
The new CIC student has aspirations of becoming a brain surgeon, so he is hoping to excel at his new school and get a scholarship.
He believes it’s his second chance at sitting the SEA exams that put him on the right track.
“When you resit or repeat, do your best the next time because great things come,” he said to students who may find themselves in a similar situation.
The family, who were all raised in the Beetham, said Claverie’s accomplishment is just one of many great things coming out of their community, which is usually mostly associated with bad things.
“I know and I am very optimistic that there are many more success stories that are going to derive from this community,” Danclar said.
