just a monday speech to be read by one of my students

Assalamualaikum and a good morning I bid to my dear teachers and my fellow friends.

Most of us here think that going to school is a guarantee that we will succeed. Sometimes, when some of us skip school too often or play truant, teachers told them if they wanted to succeed in life, they have to come to school. At other times, when teachers ask students why they come to school, they say they want to study so that they will be successful. But, unfortunately, they show little or no effort to study at all.

When teachers say “you should go to school so you can be successful” it actually means a lot more. To be successful, going to school is just the starting point. It is only the first of a list of things to do before you can be successful inside and outside of school. Today, I will explain to you about six things that we need to work on in order to really strive to be successful. Of course, for a start, go to school. We should avoid skipping classes or school days, by all means. That is the first step.

Now, once in school, we have to remind ourselves that school is a system where grades are always the priority. Therefore, we have to, firstly, pay attention in class. It is the place where we will receive all the main information about the subjects that we take in exams. We have to make sure that we understand the teachings of our teacher. After that, we have to work hard to get good grades. That includes making sure that we do all the exercises and homework given. We also need to put on extra effort through learning from extra books and finding extra information from other resources such as the internet, the television and magazines.

Other than learning about the subjects for the examinations, we should also learn values. To a certain extent, school is a perfect reflection of how the real society will look like when we go to the university or into the working life. Therefore, we could observe how we should be part of this society. For example, we should learn how to respect the people around us in school; just like we should later in our working life. Here, we should not only respect the teachers, but our fellow friends and other students too. Juniors or seniors; it doesn’t matter. We should also respect the non-teaching staff such as the clerks and the dear cleaners who we owe so much for keeping this school clean and tidy. When we respect people around us, we will be in good manners. We will behave. The value of good manners is also important everywhere, because it will, most of the time, keep us out of trouble.

Now, having intelligence and good manners is still not enough. The third thing in the list of being a successful person is to learn a few important skills. The skills include social skill, creative and critical thinking skill and risk-taking skill; just to name a few. To learn skills such as these is very important because once we are out there; either on our way to the tertiary education or to the workforce, we need to communicate well with other people using our social skill. We also need to think smartly about where should we start and how we can progress using our thinking skill. Risk-taking is needed when we have to make choices and as we know every choice has its risks. Know them well, and we will choose the right choice.

Fourthly, we should try to understand our surroundings. Gather as much experience as you can by joining in as many activities as you are allowed. As the saying goes, “experience is the best teacher”. Going through many activities and events will definitely help you to learn fast about how the world and the things in it go about. People who act too childishly are people who restrict themselves from experiencing more. They will have little meaningful insights of the world and will be too immature. Some of us might argue that there are several examples of people who go through so many things but are still immature and shallow. This is because they go through their experiences blindly. We have to think about and evaluate those experiences; don’t just have them. Reflect on them. Think! Understand! And make them positive experiences.

That aside, the fifth thing is we should try hard to know ourselves – our strengths and weaknesses. This is very important too because us, ourselves, are the core to whatever we do. And to be successful in the real world is to be clever in manipulating and improving your strength, in the same time confronting your weaknesses and turning it into something good. For example, one is good at cooking and has the passion in it. But he is weak in mathematics. He, then, should work on improving the cooking skill and in the mean time work on mathematics. How? Maybe he can manipulate his cooking hobby to learn about mathematics. When he has good results in SPM examination, he can pursue his tertiary education in culinary and become a great chef!

Finally, we should always realize that the basic of life is the spiritual aspect of it. And the only way to flourish our souls and spirits is to always try to stay close to our creator; Allah. Islam is, by all means, beautiful. If we try our best to be good Muslims, we are no far from being successful. In fact, being a true Muslim is being a successful person. The teachings of Islam are so broad that it touches every aspect of our lives. If we follow it closely; we will realize that it is a great way of life where we will be trained to be humble, disciplined, hard working, loving, kind, and intelligent people. And as we strive to be the best, we will definitely stumble upon difficult times. But if we stick on the basic of life, we will be just fine.

There you have it, all six important things to work on if we really wanted to be successful. In a nutshell, one can conclude that if we put our head and heart and soul into it, there will be nothing to stop us. Insha’Allah, we will all be successful people one day. Thank you.