Last week I had the privilege of celebrating with my GCSE tuition students their fantastic Maths results for 2024. It was an incredibly proud moment not just as their tutor, but as their mentor and friend. Today, I received a milestone of my own: a certificate confirming that I’ve passed my Level 2 Certificate in Understanding Children and Young People's Mental Health.
It was a long 4 months of dedicated study, research, reflective practice and sacrifice, made all the more harder by simultaneously juggling family life, work life and house move. This experience reminded me of the pressures our students face, and how this might affect the way they feel about a subject, education in general, their own self worth, and how difficult it can be to juggle what may seem like to them an impossible list of competing priorities.
My students success isn't just a reflection of their academic achievement, but a testament to their resilience, time management, patience and maturity —skills that are often overlooked but are essential for both academic and personal growth. These are the qualities that I strive to nurture in my tutoring sessions. The ability to control your emotions under pressure, to be focused, steadfast, and the willingness to make sacrifices in pursuit of a longer term goal, can be the difference between academic success and perceived failure. But, as my own studies and life experience has shown, they can also be the difference between the ability to thrive under pressure and maintaining good mental health, and a decline into low self esteem, weak resilience and poor mental health.
I believe that as much as academic excellence is an incredibly important part of leading a fulfilled and accomplished life, there is nothing more important then our mental health and well being, and in order to do that we need to learn to sometimes see the wood through the trees, reframe success as something multi-faceted and contextual, set healthy boundaries and believe in the power of positivity.
Much Love,
Irfana Saeed Qureshi
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