Leadership in his veins
SOME TIME ago, a young J’Voughnn had set his eyes on becoming the prime minister of Jamaica, admiring the awesome power of that office in working for the greater good of the society, especially the underclass.
It didn’t take long for him to become “deeply disappointed” with politics, turned off by the “hypocrisy and lies” which have come to define the local political arena.
“As I was learning a bit more about politics, touching the eighth, ninth grade, I loved it, and I thought I could be the prime minister of Jamaica, you know, to get into that to help a lot of people,” he told The Sunday Gleaner.
“But maturing into it and seeing the news and all of what’s going on in Jamaican politics, I just don’t wan’t to any more,” he said with great disappointment.
“The lies and the hypocrisy – and the protection of those lies and hypocrisy – I am not like that. I just don’t think I could survive. I think for many reasons, it would either force me to become something I am not or it would force me out,” he said further.
A STARTING POINT
“... Anyone who has not lost hope should consider politics because we have to have a starting point. It’s just that I think that I would suffer, and I don’t want to break myself,” reflected the articulate young man, clearly wise beyond his years.
“I am really disappointed and really angry, too, with politics and sometimes it makes me want to not be here,” added J’Voughnn.
And never one to doubt the youngster’s potential, Coach Johnson intervened: “I tell him, he still has time to be prime minister.” Leadership, undoubtedly, is in his veins. It is something school administrators were cognisant of when they appointed J’Voughnn as Jamaica College’s athletics captain for two years.
With pluck and verve, he devised a strategy to mirror his foray into athletics with his success in academics and has become a model of success in both.
“I was forced into track, but I grew to love it. I was doing well in academics at the time, and so I wasn’t going to let my academics suffer, while at the same time, I was not going to come in track – with all these expectations put on me, with your coach feeding you that you are doing this well, you can do this well – I was not going to let that down either. So there were times I had to be a student and an athlete. I did not forget that I was either,” J’Voughnn said.
He is not a nerd and his friends are not all athletes either, but he is a consummate goal-setter.
“I can’t say it enough. I say it to my boys every week that you need to firstly set goals. Then you need to get somebody to help you to maintain that and to drill that with you. Coach and I, we set goals at the start of every year, and in training, he would remind me of those goals,” he told The Sunday Gleaner.
With sage-like wisdom, he said that all individuals are mentally strong to a point, and whenever they reach that point, someone is needed to remind them that the journey is unfinished.
GUIDANCE AND COUNSELLING
This reality makes him aware of the need for more guidance and counselling for students as many have returned to school demotivated after two years of a COVID-19 disruption in studies and social life.
“Students are not the first persons to seek help unless something comes up and we find out after. We have a lot of students like that now, even more than before, and given COVID. Unless we get to a lot of them, it’s gonna take a long while before we can recover, for education and schools and students overall,” he said of the learning loss caused by the pandemic.
He urged young people to listen to their parents and teachers as they realise the very best of themselves.
While it may be too clichéd to say the sky is the limit for J’Voughnn as he sets off in August to start a new chapter, it is clear that his horizon is limitless.