This document discusses achieving academic excellence among students. It defines academic excellence as high academic performance as well as good behavior and broad knowledge. It says the primary stakeholder responsible for academic excellence is the student. To ensure excellence, students must have a strong desire to learn, identify their interests and career goals, understand their learning styles, and maintain a healthy lifestyle. Academically excellent students exhibit qualities like diligence, punctuality, and self-motivation. They enjoy benefits like scholarships but must also avoid risks like pride, challenges from teachers, and distractions from drugs or relationships.

1. ACHIEVING ACADEMIC
EXCELLENCE AMONG STUDENTS
BY
COL MUKTESHWAR PRASAD(RETD)
Ref-A SPEECH ON DELIVERED BY MR SETH NRETIA ESSIEN,
DURING THE ORIENTATION OF FIRST YEAR STUDENTS ADMITTED
INTO BISEASE SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL FOR THE 2016/17 ACADEMIC
YEAR, ON 30TH NOVEMBER, 2016
AT THE SCHOOL PREMISE.

2. INTRODUCTION
 Aim of opening session to a school or college is
 To usher or initiate the first year students into the school /college
community and
 Introduce them formally to life and activities that exist within this small
society, a microcosm in a macrocosm.
 This equips them with the requisite knowledge they need
 For a successful stay and
 To be able to achieve their goal or target in view.
 The aim of any academic institution curriculum expects nothing but
excellent academic performance of students who come out of the
education programmes
 This excellence prepares them to fill vacancy created by the old,
weak and weary adult citizens, functioning to the expectation of
society.

3. QUESTIONS
 What exactly academic excellence is?
 Who should contributes to manifest it?
 What one does to ensure academic excellence?
 What benefits an academic excellent person derives?
 What challenges are involved in the quest to achieving this academic
excellence?

4. WHAT EXACTLY ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE IS?
 Academic excellence is not only the ability to score high marks or rattle the
English Language with much rapidity and fluency, just as we use to call
people who display such abilities.
 Academic excellence goes beyond these to include
 The ability to cope with the changing world,
 Solve problems on one’s own and
 Be well equipped for the future.
 This includes the ability to display superior performance in all scholastic
and moral activities.
 Hence ,academic excellence involves
 High scoring,
 Good behaviour,
 Having broad knowledge and skills in many subjects for future use.

5. WHO SHOULD CONTRIBUTE TO MANIFEST IT?
 These come about by the responsible role played by certain stake holders.
 Stake holders responsible for promoting academic excellence.
 The first stakeholder of academic excellence is
 The student.
 Others are
 The parents,
 The school/College/ Institution authority,
 The community and
 The government.
 We will concern with the role of the student in achieving academic
excellence.

6. WHO SHOULD CONTRIBUTES TO MANIFEST IT?
 Khahil Gibran, an educationist, once said, “The teacher who is indeed
wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather
leads you to enter the threshold of your mind, for the wisdom of one
man lends not its wings unto another”.
 This quotation simply implies that no one can make the student
academically excellent if he or she is not ready for it.

7. WHAT ONE DOES TO ENSURE ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE?
 All facilities available are meant to promote academic excellence.
 These include
 Furnished library,
 ICT and other laboratory,
 Classrooms ,
 Teaching and learning materials,
 School vehicle for easy transport to and from places, l
 Lighting system for night prepping, among others.
 Also, the school has a guidance and counseling department which
addresses students’ problems.
 The disciplinary committee established by the school authority also
addresses disciplinary problems that may negatively affect students of
the school.
 In similar manner, parents and society have their role to play to
promote academic excellence.

8. WHAT ONE DOES TO ENSURE ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE?
 As students, one must have the burning desire to learn and pass well.
 This is a motivational drive that is constantly rekindled by one’s
ultimate aim of attending school/college/ instituition.
 This aim must be your constant reminder in your sleep, when you are
eating, whatever you do and wherever you find yourself at any given time.
 A student without the burning desire to learn is that who has no aim
or has lost it if he had it.
 This account for the reason why academic excellent students are always
with their books.
 Therefore, what do you want from schooling/college/instituition?
 Is it to be a teacher, nurse, bank manager or lawyer , engineer
,doctor..?
 This aim must be your constant reminder whenever you are
misusing your time.

9. WHAT ONE DOES TO ENSURE ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE?
 A good student, before coming to school/college, knows what he or she
wants to pursue.
 He or she does not wait until admission is given before deciding on the
programme to pursue.
 Having identified his/her interest as a student and relating it to his/her
future career, it becomes easy for them to relate their future career to a
particular programme.
 This sometimes requires consultation for more information, which
also enables him/her to choose the school that offers her programme of
choice.
 Hence, your ability and interest must direct you to choose what you
want to study and what you want to do in future.
 If a student chooses a course he or she has no interest in, the final result
is mostly a bad one.
 A popular saying goes like, “If I choose what I like doing well, I never
work in my lifetime”.

10. WHAT ONE DOES TO ENSURE ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE?
 It behoves on the student to identify his study habit; either as a slow learner or
a fast one.
 This implies that as a slow learner to achieve academic excellence, one must
devote more time to studying your books than the fast learners .
 As a slow learner, you need to read frequently for long before getting the
concept well-grasped in the mind.
 However, there are few others, the fast learners, popularly known as “sharp
brains” who do not spend much time on their books .
 Such students however do the learning more in the mind than what we see
outwardly.
 In considering your learning habit you must also include the time suitable for
you to learn, the subject that is difficult for you to learn and whether you prefer
learning alone or in a group.
 Some students can learn well in the early morning, others in the night and some
too in the day. If you find Mathematics difficult, it means you must devote more
time for it than any other subject on your personal time table.
 The school/college does not encourage students to stay in the night and
study because this usually make students weak in the day, causing them to
sleep in the classroom or making them stay out of class.

11. WHAT ONE DOES TO ENSURE ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE?
 Students, researchers indicate that it takes a sound mind in a sound
body to learn effectively.
 A disturbed mind cannot concentrate on what he reads or thinks
about.
 You must stay healthy and peaceful, if you want to achieve academic
excellence.
 A stubborn student who is frequently at loggerhead with his
seniors, , teachers or parents is not at peace with himself and
cannot be of a sound mind to learn.
 Most students of academic excellence are also well-disciplined.
 You need to eat well, sleep well and rest well but not to overdo them.
 If you eat and become too full, you may feel lazy and sleep during
studies.
 Resting too, is more psychological than physiological.
 In simple terms, if you rest, your mind become more refreshed than your
body.

12. AN ACADEMIC EXCELLENT STUDENT EXHIBIT CERTAIN QUALITIES
THAT DISTINGUISH HIM FROM OTHERS.
 Such a student is studious and diligent.
 He has little or no time for other things except his books and would want
to learn even when he is sick.
 He is punctual and regular in school/college.
 Though he is independent in his quest for knowledge and does not depend
greatly on the teacher, he still values the effort of the teacher and what
prevails in the classroom.
 He does not only perform well in class but wants to try his ability in
other academic activities such as debates and quizzes.
 In short, his fame and happiness rests with the school/College.
 He is not happy when he is not in school.
 A good students believes in himself and the principle of “to teach is to
learn twice”.
 He teaches others what he knows in order to become better himself.

13. AN ACADEMIC EXCELLENT STUDENT EXHIBIT CERTAIN QUALITIES
THAT DISTINGUISH HIM FROM OTHERS.
 Such students set high targets for themselves and are always not
satisfied with what they get though that may be a lifetime achievement
to someone.
 As an independent learner, he or she consults books and friends who
have what he does not.
 He approaches seniors for past questions and even seeks assistance from
them and his teachers.
 In simple terms, he learns ahead of the class.
 Because of that he asks questions that put the class at sea though his
questions relates to the topic under study.
 These make an academic excellent student unique.

14. WHAT BENEFITS AN ACADEMIC EXCELLENT PERSON DERIVES?
 A student who is academically good enjoys several benefits that envy the dull
and weak ones.
 He enjoys the company of the attractive flowers in the class as well
as his male counterparts.
 He gets free gifts from them and is easily assisted in time of need.
 There is no gainsaying about the admiration awarded him by his
teachers, the scholarship and numerous prizes he gets if the school
is giving the opportunity to students.
 His motivation is intrinsic and self-driven, coming from his personal
effort and academic achievement.
 His secret lays in his desire for his future career.
 These students mostly have their mentor from whom they copy what
they do but go beyond them to display extra performance.
 Because of these, he is never tired of learning.

15. WHAT CHALLENGES ARE INVOLVED IN THE QUEST TO ACHIEVING
THIS ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE?
 There are precautions most academic excellent students should take.
 The first is the possibility of the student boasting or exhibiting pride
because they may see themselves as the one-eyed man in the city of the
blind. Sometimes, they boast because of everyone wants to befriend
them.
 Others go beyond boundary to challenge teachers in the classroom
only to display to their mates of what they think the teacher does not
know.
 In other words, they feel “too known”.
 Drug peddlers may also deceive students of academic excellence.
 Other risks exposed to the student include infatuation ,sex ,anxiety
,drop outs and possible drop in performance due to attraction to
opposite sex , coming out of parental control and so called freedom
and over expenditure just to show off and debt trap.

16. CONCLUSION
 It has been mentioned that our educational system expects nothing but
excellent academic performance of students,
 Hence several conditions and facilities have been provided to facilitate this
dream by stake holders of education which include our parents, society,
school and the government but the most important stake holder of
academic excellence is you, the student.
 Mention has also been made of what ensure academic excellence, the
joy and danger of being academically excellent and
 It is hoped that this presentation will equip students to start the journey of
academic excellence.