SHANE SU­PERVILLE

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP and for­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young called on young peo­ple to stay ground­ed in their faith and ethics while chas­ing their am­bi­tions, as he urged them to work hard and avoid tak­ing the easy way out.

Young made the call dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at the Sa­cred Heart Boys’ RC School grad­u­a­tion at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel’s Ball­room, St Ann’s, yes­ter­day, where he laud­ed the grad­uands for their work eth­ic and im­plored them to con­tin­ue heed­ing the ad­vice of par­ents, teach­ers and ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly in achiev­ing their dreams.

Re­fer­ring to his own jour­ney as a stu­dent, to an at­tor­ney and even­tu­al­ly a politi­cian, Young said he was grate­ful for the sup­port of pos­i­tive fig­ures who guid­ed him to a pro­duc­tive lifestyle.

He al­so im­plored the young­sters to be wary of dis­trac­tions and urged them to achieve their goals through hard work and not short­cuts.

“There are no short­cuts in life. Short­cuts get you in­to trou­ble and hard work al­ways pays off.

“So lis­ten to that mes­sage; it might not make sense now, but you will know. If you put in the hard work for SEA, you’re go­ing to do well.”

Young al­so warned the boys to be cau­tious about the type of con­tent they may en­counter while brows­ing so­cial me­dia, say­ing that some posts were harm­ful and con­veyed the wrong mes­sage.

With­out re­fer­ring to any spe­cif­ic leader or group, Young al­so raised his con­cern over the qual­i­ty of lead­er­ship that young peo­ple would be ex­posed to.

“You have to make the right choic­es and some­times, un­for­tu­nate­ly, not on­ly in Trinidad, but through­out the world, peo­ple that we look up to in lead­er­ship po­si­tions are not go­ing to give us the best ex­am­ples.

“But you know and you’ve had a good foun­da­tion and you see God? Get close to God from this age. He is go­ing to help you to make the right choic­es in life.”

Young al­so thanked par­ents and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers who at­tend­ed the cer­e­mo­ny to sup­port the grad­uands, as he cred­it­ed them with in­still­ing the cor­rect val­ues in the boys, and urged them to con­tin­ue their guid­ance as they en­ter a new phase of their lives.

Dur­ing her open­ing re­marks, Prin­ci­pal Gillian Ur­bano al­so con­grat­u­lat­ed the boys on their achieve­ments and re­mind­ed them that more work awaits in this new chap­ter of their ed­u­ca­tion ex­pe­ri­ence.

“No mat­ter how much you achieve, there is al­ways room to learn more. To be kinder, to aim high­er.

“Re­mem­ber, your jour­ney con­tin­ues every day and each new day presents an op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow. To help achieve your full po­ten­tial, be guid­ed by the wis­dom of St Fran­cis De As­sisi. Live with hu­mil­i­ty; true great­ness comes with hu­mil­i­ty. Fo­cus on what tru­ly mat­ters, re­spect na­ture, prac­tice com­pas­sion, show love and seek peace.”

The grad­u­a­tion’s theme was Far from Fin­ished, and fea­tured the 2016 song of the same name by So­ca artiste Aaron “Voice” St Louis, who is al­so a past stu­dent of Sa­cred Heart Boys’ RC.

Dur­ing the cer­e­mo­ny, the boys re­ceived awards for their per­for­mance in dif­fer­ent sub­jects, as well as for their ex­tra-cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties.