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December 2010
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ValedictorianAn instrument of changeVandana Siew Sankar
It is the kind of broad response that only intrigues the questioner. She’d done English Literature, French and Economics at CAPE, something a little more specific must have been acting on her. Pressed, she reveals that her parents had both worked in different capacities at mental health institutions – her mother Leela was a secretary and her deceased father, Harold had been a nurse. Ever since she was very young, she believed she was adept at sussing out people quickly. She felt she was highly intuitive, and her interaction with others reinforced that feeling, and coupled with her exposure to the world of mental health, she felt psychology might be a good professional choice. She graduated with first class honours and has already begun her MSc in Clinical Psychology at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope. Vandana has decided to modify her approach to her Master’s degree though. This time around, she plans to find a little more of that balance between study and leisure (the balance she has counselled so many others to seek) and to give herself a little more breathing space. “I’ve always been convinced that you should do what you feel passionate about,” she says, but she also knows that her passions have made her a very driven individual. She is the kind of person who combined her studies with a range of community and religious activities. She thinks that she might have overdone it a bit, forgotten how restorative it can be to just relax. She wants to change the world, she’s ambitious and has always been a go-getter. Maybe it is connected to the fact that her father died unexpectedly of a heart attack when she was just 12, and as an only child she felt a push to responsibility. Her vivacity, she says, come from her “passion for life and hunger for success,” but although that has not diminished, she is ready for an “attitudinal change.” “I’ve decided not to pressure myself to excel at a certain level… I am going to excel, but I was driven by musts and oughts, and those things will drive you insane. I have to learn how to take care of the carer.” Vandana says she does not feel her school days were as happy as they could have been because she was so driven. She didn’t give enough time and care to friendships and she regrets that. “My life can only be meaningful if there are people to share it with. I need to enjoy the journey, and that’s what the Bachelor’s taught me.” As she stood before her graduating class, her parting advice was “visualize what you want for the world, and use yourself as an instrument for achieving that change, even if you do so, one person at a time.” Photography by PIPS |
Vandana Siew Sankar, one of two valedictorians for the 2010 graduating class of the Faculty of Social Sciences, says she wanted to do a BSc in Psychology because, “I wanted to understand people and why they do the things they do, and I wanted to understand myself.”