Record breaker: A boy wonder’s three commandments for success

Oun lives by 3 commandments: Do what you love - Don’t procrastinate - Always have your motivation in mind.

ISLAMABAD:

Oun, yet to start college, is already a star. He set a new record in General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) and O’ levels academia by getting 15 straight As, 14 of which are distinctions.

In recognition, the young student has received full scholarship and an outstanding performance letter from Warwick University for the Global Leaders Course.

(Read: Taxila boy sets world record, scores 28 A's in O levels)

In addition to his academic excellence, Muhammad Oun Abbas Zaidi, a student from Roots School System, DHA 1 branch, has been the youngest head delegate in the Roots Model United Nations Junior 2010 event and the youngest debater at National University of Science and Technology.

With a promising future, one can’t help but wonder how he managed to accomplish all his achievements. Oun lives by three commandments:

Do what you love

First and foremost, he accredits his success to choosing subjects that he not only had an interest in, but could also easily grasp. “Cambridge list offers you about 30 subjects to choose from but it is important to choose the subjects you enjoy and can grasp,” he said.

Zaidi’s choices of subjects were wide – ranging from biology, computer science, and statistics to economics and commerce.

He said that having a mix of subjects from different disciplines helps keep studies interesting and allows one to expand their faculty of reasoning.

Don’t procrastinate

His second strategy for success is a simple one but one that is hard to abide by: do not procrastinate and do your work every day instead of leaving it to the last minute.

Zaidi said, “The day before my exams I would go out to play cricket, because I had studied all year round I had time to revise and relax before the exam rather than cramming and stressing out.”

He said he tries to minimise the use of social networking sites like Facebook and instead use the internet as a tool to spruce up the learning process. “The internet has made it very easy to access exactly the information you want; so instead of having to read text book multiple times it is more time-efficient to find it online.”

University lectures available on Youtube are particularly invaluable, Oun said.

Always have your motivation in mind

Zaidi is surely a motivated individual and being from a family of high-achievers, he strives to be on par with the Ivy League standards his cousins have set for him. Coupled with this personal drive and the legacy he belongs to, he has high hopes of becoming an engineer in either computers or electronics.

He feels that being surrounded by successful family members gives him a sense of a healthy competition while being at the same time inspirational.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 6^th, 2011.