Laidlaw LiA Reflection Week 6: A Full Circle Storybook Ending

This week, was truly a life-changing week for me, and hopefully for my fellow scholars and the students as well. This week was a testament to all the hard work and our efforts over the past 6 weeks, and it ended far beyond our expectations. For me, it was such a full-circle ending that this journey deserved.

The first 2 days of this week were probably truly the most tiring work days of this program, especially for a few scholars. In these 2 days, we went all out to make sure all the prototypes could be finished and ready to be presented on the last 3 presentation days. In these 2 days, some scholars even worked late nights in the TSN office to fix all the prototype issues, troubleshoot, and make sure everything was presentable and up to standards. This was truly essential since the charity sponsors will be attending the presentation days to see the work and progress of the students and how far they have grown and learnt through this journey.

In these harsh days, pessimistic thoughts definitely went through our minds back and forth, seeing how many technical issues occurred with the students' prototypes and given the very limited timeframe. A few of us were on the brink of frustration and giving up. However, as Laidlaw Scholars we had to reflect back and manifest the values which had been taught to us as leaders, which are ambitious, brave, curious, determined, extraordinary, fast, and good. All of these values were essential to drive us to see our LiA projects through and give our best so we could make a great impact on the communities we were working in, for us it was for the greater good of our students. 

However, as mentioned earlier, by the end of this week, all these negative thoughts that have ever occurred in our minds throughout our hardships these past few weeks were instantly erased. I am confident that my fellow TSN scholars will share the same sentiment as me in this regard. 

After seeing our beloved students with whom we have all built rapport present and give their best on stage, we couldn’t help but be very proud of them as their instructors and friends. Seeing how supportive the guests, parents, and sponsors were toward what the students have achieved was also such a relief, and we are sure that it will further motivate our students to keep on innovating and become young intellectuals in the future as TSN envisioned. 

 As a scholar personally, I am also very touched seeing how this project and all my efforts wrapped up in such a beautiful and touching way. I was also very touched when one moment, one of the students I taught mentioned that my concerns in agriculture, the field I was teaching and a lifelong field of interest or passion of mine, have inspired him in his journey in this project, inspiring him to create a prototype based on my concerns in the field. Hearing this when watching his presentation live, my heart dropped, I was in awe and in a loss for words. Hearing how I have taken part in inspiring someone and his journey truly moved me. It made me realize that even at this point in my life, still as a student who has aspirations, through exploring what I love passionately, I am able to make an impact on someone. 

This realization made me feel truly content and the happiest I have ever been, beating all my past accolades. It gave me a purpose and a direction in my life, it further strengthened my drive to pursue my passion for agriculture and to make an even larger impact in the future in this field. 

Thus, for me the ending of this program was far greater than I could have ever imagined, it made all my efforts felt paid for. It was truly a full-circle ending which I felt was better than storybooks. Starting from a quite chaotic beginning with all its challenges and uncertainties, and ending with all these new lessons and goals which I think provided a drive or a purpose or even clarity for both the scholars and the students.