Running out of excuses

Last Saturday, more than 1,800 university students gathered at the ExCel Centre in London. Put this way, this reads like the start of an ordinary news story that would probably be turned into a brief. However, for those 1,800 students, this was a day that will stay with them in some way.

I was one of those 1,800 students and indeed that day will stay with me since I realised that I’m running out of excuses not to complete different things. It wasn’t just that the event was a gathering of this year’s Chevening scholars. [Chevening scholarships are one of the UK government’s international awards schemes. Applications are currently open and close on November 3. Follow the link for details]. That in itself was no mean feat since we are all from different parts of the world –think of how many Commonwealth countries are there and you get the picture.

However, what impressed on me most were the guest speakers of the day –two in particular.

The power of half a second

The first was Chris Holmes or as he is more officially know, the Lord Holmes of Richmond [I can’t help hearing this being announced like they do in movies like The Princess Diaries]. Before that day, all I knew about Holmes was what was written in the programme –that he is a nine-time Paralympic gold medalist, and is in the House of Lords. I assumed he had been included among the speakers to talk about British sports or something like that. Boy was I off the mark!

Sure he talked about sports but it was on a much deeper level. Holmes came to the stage on the arm of a Chevening Secretariat employee. On his other hand was Lottie, his guide dog. That’s when I realised that Holmes is visually impaired. When I’d read Paralympic god medalist, I thought he was missing an arm or leg, and could therefore swim with a prosthetic. It’s at that moment that my interest was piqued.

Holmes must have done several public speaking events because he ice breakers down to the T. After the ice breakers, he told of losing his eyesight overnight as a teenager.

“I was blinded overnight but the embers to complete A-Levels, join Cambridge [University], and represent Great Britain in swimming remained,” he said. His bio on Wikipedia says he suffered a genetic eye disorder called Familial exudative vitreoretinopathy.

Did he wallow in misery and give up on these dreams? No. While his conditions meant new challenges which initially included going to a specialised school and staying away from the pool, his passion kept him going. He was returned to his former school and continued swimming alongside sighted swimmers. And he didn’t just study and swim. He excelled at it. All three of his dreams came to pass; he completed his A-Levels, joined Cambridge, and was part of Great Britain’s swimming team from 1985 to 2002, serving as captain for five years of that duration, according to his bio on the Paralympics site.

One of his milestones during his swimming career was his performance at the 1992 Paralympics in Barcelona, where he won six gold medals. The way he tells it, not many people had faith in him swimming to victory. However, victory was his. For the sixth gold medal, he beat his competition by half a second. HALF A SECOND!

One of Lord Holmes’ inspiring talks | YouTube

Another highlight of his talk was his answer to the question on what keep him motivated.

“There is no such thing as individual success. It is a team effort. The thought of the other guys on my team and the effort they are putting in. That is what keeps me motivated,” was his answer. Such a simple and humble way of looking at life.

Listening to him, I was embarrassed that I am afraid of swimming and have therefore never realy learnt to do it. Let’s just say that the next time I’m in the pool, I’ll do more than play with the water, so help me God.

Rejection is not the end

The other speaker whose words stayed with me was Harriet Minter, Editor of The Guardian’s Women in Leadership. Full disclosure: I love this section so much that I was more than a little star struck when she got up to speak.

She has a good sense of humour and it is something she developed at a young age. In school, she realised that to be liked or to belong, a girl had to either be skinny or funny. When as she said, she realised the first wouldn’t work out for her, she taught herself to be funny, and succeeded. Oh, I forgot to mention that she started to read really early since being an asthmatic kept her in hospital numerously. Not even a hospital can put a booklover down!

After school, she applied for several jobs and kept getting rejected. This rejection must have so tough since she first disregarded an email for The Guardian asking her to come in for an interview. Thankfully, she went for it and has since made her mark there. But it didn’t come easy.

It took a while to convince her boss that Women in Leadership was a necessary forum. Minter had seen enough women on the Tube reading Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, and the high number of hits for stories on work-life balance for women to believe that there was an audience looking for the kind of stories you will find on Women in Leadership. After managing to convince that boss, she got a new boss, and she was back to zero. But did she give up? No.

Instead she did a story on an inspiring woman whose story got rave reviews. The woman also turned out to be her boss’ best friend, a detail Minter was not aware of at the time of writing the story. Soon, she was in business! She is clearly doing something right since she has been invited to speak on diversity in the workplace, among other topics.

Minter’s talk on women having no limits in the workplace | YouTube

One thing she said that I’ll never forget was:

“Do the stuff that advance you and make you powerful. Not the ones you do because you have to.” Of course she put a disclaimer that you shouldn’t be caught not doing what you have to.

One scholar asked her what she would tell a young ambitious woman, and she replied, to ambitious women and men, “keep ambitious and look after yourself”.

Since listening to Holmes and Minter, I feel like I have run out of excuses to accomplish the tasks I have at hand, big and small. Now I pray that this inspiration holds and doesn’t fall sway to a long forgotten memory.