Top Sanguine Lesson Life Teaches
By: Captain Supriya Patil
Tags: Success, School Life, Focus, Determination

Photo by Clarissa Watson on Unsplash

As we grow in life, we live like a character in a book. The one you are the main protagonist. As you undertake this journey from the time you are in your mother’s womb till you pass on to the next life, life is filled with emotions and experiences that you carry and live by. The same is with my journey in life. I still have a long way to go, but in my 37 years in being, I have had the most adventurous life with failures that make me bounce back and relive like never before. Let me take you through one of my life lessons.

The Background

I loved going to school. I studied in a Government school in a small town in India. Those days, we didn’t have uniforms and wore slippers and walked to school with a school bag made of ‘Khaki’. The classrooms had typical black boards protruding from the wall and we sat in files on the ground with boys on one side and girls on the other. We used slates and chalk to take notes and studied in the Marathi language. I studied in this school till second grade and then moved to Africa with my family. (My father got a job there.)

Life Abroad

Life at schools abroad was an eye opener for me. Such lovely layout, good uniforms, desks and different skin coloured teachers and students, who spoke in English!! Now, I have never studied the English language in my life!! I could not understand anything!! SO….there was a plummet!! I moved from grade 2 to prep!! They told my father, if I excelled in each class as per desired standards, I will jump class to the next!! The same was explained to me by my father! The teachers were great and friendly. My only issue was talking to them as I could not communicate in English.

The Struggle

Imagine how a grade 2 student will look with toddlers in prep! Anyway, I had to do better to get back to where I was before coming to Africa. I was good at almost everything but English!! The main culprit of my backseat. Then one day, when I had jumped a class, there were two students of that class who seemed very popular. They always made fun of me since I could not speak English and I was more of a wheatish skin coloured. They bullied me so much that once I had to scream my lungs out to seek help. That was the last day of the bullying!! Thereafter, I made my mind up, English it is! I had this wonderful African teacher, Mr John Chibulu. He was a loving, old but firm teacher and knew what he wanted of his students when it came to teaching. I learnt a lot from him. He taught me the use of English words like never before. I owe him and thank him for teaching me.

I had to put in extra efforts to speak like others in the school. They all had some accent and spoke fluently. However, I was catching up! I was given a lot of extra lessons to learn. I had to do it!

The Reward

This quote by John Matthews is what I truly believe in. I jumped to next classes since my IQ and performance compared to the top in the class were much better! I excelled not only in studies but also in extra-curricular activities. I became popular and won the school prefect selection and the house trophy too for my performance.

The Reason Why Hard Work Is The Key To Success (motivationgrid.com) This is a link to one good article I read. Three points I connected were:

Hard work builds discipline. It teaches you values. It gives you results.

And few points that I want to add to this from my life are:

There is no shortcut to success. Patience and resilience will play an important role. Do not let others tell you that you are incapable.

Hence, letting life control you is not reality, but taking control of your life is more sanguine to where you want to be in future. Life teaches you a lot, it is what you take note of and do about it! So live life and let the journey take you far with happiness.