All parents who caution their children to focus on academics and not extra curricular activities had better think again. It’s a well known fact that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, or for that matter – Jane a dull girl.
Organizations are looking more and more at the extracurricular activities on an applicant’s CV these days. Generally, those who are actively involved in extracurricular activities are thought to be more well rounded that those who concentrate only on their studies.
This is the message that Saashya Rodrigo of The Study, who has received a prestigious scholarship to Georgia State University through the Georgia Rotary student program as well as membership from the National Society of High School Scholars (NSHSS) exemplifies.
“It was more my extracurricular activities rather than my academic skills that won me this honour,” says Saashya. “I was never a brilliant, straight A’s kind of student and so I never even dreamed that I would one day get a scholarship like this!”
The 18-year-old’s dream is to one day become a professional working with differently-abled children and so she is going to use her scholarship at the university to study Special Education, focusing on children with special needs.
This has long been a goal of hers and from the time she finished her O/Levels, she has been a volunteer at the Chitra Lane School for the Special Child.
She studied until her O’ Levels at Methodist College and then joined The Study to do her A/Levels, which she has just completed. She describes herself as someone who never particularly stood out or shone in any field, especially academics but ultimately with all her extra curricular activities, she was an all-rounder who did fairly well, which was all that mattered.
At Methodist College, she was in the interact club, took part in sports meets, especially swimming in which she represented her school, took part in debates and inter-house singing and was in the school choir. She insists that none of these activities took time away from her studies.
The Study meanwhile is a school meant exclusively for A’ Levels and at the time Saashya joined, did not have much to offer in the way of extra curricular activities. She missed the Interact Club and proposed to have one started at her new school as well. The school authorities and students were highly cooperative and so an interact club which according to her has since gone on to do ‘brilliantly’ was started. “We wanted to do something that was not only sustainable but would have long term benefits and our goal in all our projects have been to make them innovative and ‘out of the box’,” says Saashya.
As an example, their very first project which received wide acclaim was called Literary Rites, where they had a work shop with famous Sri Lankan authors such as Ameena Hussein, Yasmin Gooneratne and Vivimarie Vanderpoorten who gave the audience the benefit of their expertise on what it meant to be an author and shared their experiences with them.
Saashya’s reward for all this came through recognition from the Georgia Rotary Student programme which awarded her a year’s scholarship to Georgia State University. It was also they who recommended her to NSHSS, founded by Claes Nobel, a member of the family who established the Nobel prizes in order to carry on the Nobel family’s legacy of recognizing and rewarding contributions to world betterment. Membership to this organization is by nomination and invitation only and it’s considered a rare honour to become a member.
Saashya’s scholarship programme starts in September of this year but she is leaving in July to get herself oriented with her new surroundings and hopefully, a new phase of life.
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