Motivational Talk to Matriculating Students of the State University on Wednesday, 7th February, 2018. Determination, Self-Discipline & Hard work: Prerequisites for Academic Excellence By: Dr. Oluwaseun Ebiesuwa (Lecturer, Computer Science Department, Babcock University) The Vice Chancellor, University The Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academics), The Deputy Vice Chancellor (Administration), The Registrar, Other Principal Officers of this great citadel of learning, All other Faculty and Staff of the University here present, My Lords Spiritual and Temporal, Matriculating Students, Parents, Family and Well-wishers, Gentlemen of the Press, Distinguished ladies and Gentlemen I choose to begin this speech by expressing profound gratitude to the formidable administration of ably led by Prof. Olanrewaju Fagbohun for inviting me to speak at this momentous occasion of the matriculation ceremony of its newly admitted students for the 2017/2018 academic session. Aristotle the famous philosopher of Greek descent opined that since "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit”. This underscores the fact that excellence in any of its ramifications is never a product of accident but is birthed by conscious and consistent efforts geared towards achieving a set goal. It is common knowledge that Michael Jackson and Bob Marley achieved excellence in their musical career; Pele of Brazil and Diego Armando Maradona of Argentina stood out conspicuously in the world of football; Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal over the years have displayed an uncanny mastery of the tennis game; Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson were kingpins in the boxing circle; Prof. Wole Soyinka and Prof. Chinua Achebe rank amongst the greatest literary icons has ever produced. It is expedient to note that in all the spheres of excellence highlighted above, none of the giants in any sphere got distinguished by sheer serendipity. They all toiled and kept working till they mastered their art. The American inventor named Thomas Alva Edison lent credence to the need to labour in order to achieve excellence by positing that “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration”. Determination, self-discipline and hard work therefore form the bedrock for excellence in any human endeavour. Academic excellence is thus also premised on these three aforementioned attributes. Invariably, determination, self-discipline and hard work are qualities that must be imbibed by anyone who genuinely desires academic excellence. I will therefore expand on these three attributes to further accentuate their relevance as prerequisites for academic excellence. Determination: Life always presents hurdles and challenges on the pathway to success. This is why a lot of people throw in the towel before achieving success, thus their dreams and aspirations get truncated. Excellence in academics will always be elusive if the candidate in the quest for excellence is not determined. Determination will make a student burn the candles to study hard; it will give you the needed impetus to forge ahead in your academic pursuit despite the odds against you; it will help you persevere and refrain from taking impetuous decisions that can mortgage your glorious future for some ephemeral pleasure. Determination will help you focus on your goal and remain impervious to distractions seeking to dissuade you from placing a premium on your academics. Determination will prevent you from giving excuses as a justification for failure. It will stop you from retreating when confronted with humongous encumbrances on your path to attaining distinction in your academic work. Determination will awaken in you the reality of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Self-discipline: From the foregoing, determination would often make the student in search of academic excellence achieve success in the long run. However, academic excellence is not defined by achieving an extraordinary feat by a stroke of fortune. Such can be likened to a flash in the pan which will not usually be enduring. Academic excellence demands the person exuding it to achieve success at academic endeavours over and over again. Andy Grove proposed that “Success breeds complacency and complacency breeds failure; only the paranoid survive”. This makes rather explicit the fact that success at any enterprise has some complacency associated with it. It is the responsibility of the student who has achieved an extraordinary feat in academics to avoid smugness in all forms by persistently working as though nothing has been achieved. This will help the person in question sustain the academic rituals characterized by the rigours which he or she constantly engaged in to engender success. This way, it will be extremely difficult for the candidate to be overtaken by complacency which eventually breeds failure. Complacency when it develops would make the victim who perhaps has achieved success at a venture become very comfortable with that attainment and subsequently become reluctant to seek greater accomplishments than the previous. Thus, the victim loses regard for observing the academic rituals that he or she regarded as sacrosanct before now and gradually the individual concerned slips off the path to attaining academic excellence which requires success to be attained repeatedly till it becomes seemingly effortless for the individual to replicate such superlative performance over and over again. Self-discipline is that attribute that helps the individual who is new to academic success understand that for such feats to be repeated, he or she needs to keep doing what led to the initial success. This is what I earlier referred to as “academic rituals”. Self-discipline encapsulates such qualities as “time management” and “prioritization of tasks”. The former emphasizes the judicious use of the student’s time while the latter borders on setting your priorities right as regards the accomplishment of tasks jostling for your attention, always bearing in mind that your academics is the primary reason you enrolled in the University. Hard work: Martin Luther King Jr. an American civil-rights activist asserted that “All labour that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence”. There is no substitute for hard work and as a matter of fact, hard work is pivotal to the attainment of academic excellence. No genuine success is gotten without hard work being factored in. Hard work promotes the need to be painstaking in our academic work; it deemphasizes the “cutting corners syndrome” which is premised on finding the easy way out rather than doing things the right way. Students who imbibe hard work will read piecemeal from the beginning of the semester till it ends preferably for some number of hours every day in order to keep abreast with the contents of the various courses they offer. Students who are recalcitrant and refuse to work hard usually end up not studying early enough during the semester, but rather wait until the examinations are fast approaching when they already have a stockpile of work that has accumulated during the semester. Such students usually find it rather herculean to handle this vast amount of work and are presented with no other alternative than using the “fire brigade approach” in preparing for the examinations. More often than not, such persons engage in memorizing the notes handed to them by their lecturers but at the end of the semester examinations, they find it an uphill task remembering what they had memorized for use in future. This approach to reading is a bane in the Nigerian educational system today as a good number of students adopt the “fire brigade approach” in preparing for examinations. This will do no good to the students engaging in it. I recommend that lecturers in the Nigerian educational sector put measures in place to checkmate such students by ensuring that their questions are not lifted verbatim from the notes given in class. Lecturers should subject the understanding of their students to the litmus test by ensuring that mechanisms are set up to ensure that the grades earned by students are reflective of their understanding in the courses taken. This way the standard of education in our dear nation will be raised and the Nigerian educational system will be the better for it. Determination, self-discipline and hard work are prerequisites for academic excellence. However, only the Almighty God gives any man the grace to attain academic excellence. It is therefore important for students who aspire great heights in academics to put God first in their academic pursuit and also develop a harmonious relationship with the Creator of all that exists. In closing, I admonish all matriculating students to develop a positive mental attitude towards academics and never undermine your ability to excel in academic endeavours. Put the Almighty God first in all you do and imbibe the qualities of determination, self-discipline and hard work. In no distant time you shall be a “cream of the crop” student and winning academic laurels will no longer be elusive. I wish you all a fulfilling academic odyssey throughout the duration of your first degree program at the Lagos State University. Thank you for listening.