ABU DHABI // Ninon Nelson has a 4.0 grade point average, has been elected to her school’s student parliament and takes part in countless extracurricular activities. But the 15-year-old is no ordinary “superbrain”.
“The thing is, when you read all these stories of all these superbrains with a high IQ who study for, like, 12 hours, get up in the morning – I find that a little bit tiring. My main agenda is, you have fun while studying,” says Ninon, an Indian who has spent all her life in Abu Dhabi.
Ninon and four of her St Joseph’s School classmates are travelling to the United States this month to spend 10 days at a leadership conference.
The conference takes place during a time when most children are just beginning to relish the first weeks of their summer holiday, but as Ninon says: “No pain, no gain.”
Her secret to academic success is positivity, she says. “The minute you change the way you think, everything changes around you. You don’t think ‘this is hard for me, I can’t do this’. You will definitely not do it. You need to think ‘I like this subject, let me find something fun in it so that I’ll never forget it’. That’s an approach you need to have.”
She studies by making herself fall in love with a subject. “When you make yourself interested in something, that’s how you actually study,” says Ninon, an only child.
Her favourite subject is physics because “it’s like the definition of life in one book”.
She says she is diligent about making time to study daily so that she does not find herself cramming during exams.
“It’s like a birthday cake,” she says. “I can’t expect you to eat your whole birthday cake on the day of your birthday. The next day, you’ll be in the hospital. So, you know, piece by piece. Every day. That way you don’t forget the flavour of the cake, you enjoy the cake every day and towards the end you’re perfectly fine.
“That’s the same way you need to study. You attend class every day, you study a little bit every day and when the final day comes when you need to prove yourself ... it’s no pressure, it’s no strain.”
rpennington@thenational.ae
