A Few Lines of Inspirational Message During the Recognition of Honors (1st grading; 3rd Year Level)

To all the honor students, congratulations! May you double you efforts for the second grading period if not maintain the fervor in all your intellectual endeavors. May I advice, anyway that as you become popular in the campus still you should remain humble. Refrain looking down on your less intelligent classmates or schoolmates, thinking you are more important than them. In the educational arena, as students you are still on training. This isn’t real victory yet. Real victory in education is when you already finish a course and land on a decent job.

According to the DepEd survey most successful individuals merely have an average I.Q. Average people, accordingly, tend to be more successful in life than those individuals who were performing very well during their studies. Why is it so? Because these popular students did not only earned swelled grades but swelled heads as well. Yumayabang. They focus more on the importance of the honors that they may get out of their studies. They forget that the real essence of studying is to learn. Getting high grades is important but it is more significant to absorb, to live the lessons learned in each of your subjects particularly in your Values Education. Do not merely memorize but inculcate into your hearts the lessons learned from each of your subjects.

I’m not here to discourage you for getting exceptional scholastic performance. Congratulations indeed because you serve as an inspiration to others. However, may I remind you as well that success likewise require that throughout your life you need to maintain not only the intellectual fervor but the equilibrium of humility that in the face of all humanity we are all equal. God may have endowed on you greater intellectual prowess compared to others but it has a purpose not to make yourselves selfish but to be of service to others. Let us be reminded always by one of the nuggets of wisdom we can get from the movie Spiderman. It goes, “with great power comes great responsibility”.

To the rest of the students who are merely serving as audience in this gathering, students without honors, congratulations to you as well. Congratulations for your perseverance. Congratulations because many have already dropped out and you are still here.

Accordingly, “The illiterate of the 21st century are not those who cannot read and write, but those who doesn’t want to learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

What does it mean?

Comparing your generation to the previous generations, education nowadays is more accessible than before. Even the handicapped people, they can nowadays attain higher education. This is because of the availability of new educational programs and technology.

The definition of illiterate nowadays does not refer anymore to those who cannot read or write but it can be, as well, referred to those students who may be physically present in school but mentally absent. These are the students who doesn’t want to learn, unlearn and relearn. This is because they are already comfortable with their ignorance.

For the honor students, again, congratulations!

And for the rest of the students, do not give up we hope to see you all promoted for 4^th year at the end of the school year…

Thank you for listening…