Prove them wrong!

I was going through a friends post about how they finally felt like they belonged somewhere after all these years, and to be truthfully honest it brought me back to something that happened to me late last year, early this year.

As most people who follow me on Twitter know, earlier this year I won a competition to Strasbourg in France, which involved travelling to the EU Parliament. This trip was called the Rotary Youth Leadership.

I first heard about this in November 2014 when my teacher informed me of the first round of interviews. Our school had only had one person win ever, and she had gone on to study Law in the UK, and to be honest I never thought I could win. I had to beat 6 other people in a school level, 6 more in a county level, and then several more in a regional level to win the competition. The thing was it wasn't just an application process, you had to do interviews!

The thing is no matter how many things I do outside of school, inside of school I considered average, because I'm a part of a system that doesn't recognise extra curricular, even if it does involve me running a business which thought 1000 kids to code in just over a year.

The truth was when I made it past the first set of interviews for this trip, the people in charge of the competition spoke to my school, and the school said "Harry doesn't do very well in school", they were almost surprised I had made it through to the next round.

Anyway to get down to the my favourite part of this story. After making through the first round of the interviews in my school, I went on to beat six other people on a local level, and then went on to beat several other people in rounds of interviews to make it through to the trip. I am still only the second person EVER in my school to win this competition!

My point?

My point is very simple, and is one I want to make to every young person currently going into the rather cruel environment that is secondary school. You don't have to get straight A's, you don't even need B's, if you do, then great, and keep it up, but if you don't, then don't worry!

The thing is you need to go out there, and find that one thing that you love more than anything else, and work on it like you have never worked on anything harder in your life, and prove those people who called you stupid, or incapable, WRONG.

Trust me when you find that one thing you love, you will find that place you belong and the people you belong with.