Seize the opportunity

THE sentiments echoed by our Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama urging students to make good use of the opportunity available for them and to study, learn and create their own future (FT 12/01) can never be stressed enough.

Students today are so fortunate to have the opportunity to further their academic studies into tertiary institutions through the Tertiary Education Loans Scheme (TELS).

Before TELS, if you were an average to low student and didn’t have the financial support from your family, you had to look for a job and find your own way through life.

Although there is an abundance of great educational materials and vast opportunities for online studies, students opt for fun, prioritising social media over studies, doing nothing productive other than playing games and socialising and hoping for an easy way through life and relying on their parents support.

At the end of the day, the fact remains, that there is no easy way through life and this is where the pathway of their choices come to a dead end.

My message to students in this time and age is that, “the reality of your slackness and indiscipline will definitely hit home as you get older when you will realise the time you have wasted and the opportunities you have lost, some never to return again”.

Life is tough and in order to survive and be successful, one must strive for an education and as our PM stated, “make good use of the opportunity at hand”.

SIMON HAZELMAN Rava Estate, Savusavu