Appointment to Board of Governors
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he SAS Board of Governors is pleased to announce the appointment of Brent Nelson Smith to the board effective April 19, 2011. Brent will take the seat of Bart Broadman who is stepping down after six years of dedicated service to SAS. The board extends its gratitude to Bart for his many years of service and leadership on behalf of the school. Brent is a co-founder and managing partner of LevelOne Capital Limited, which provides financial advisory, consulting and investment services throughout Asia, and is executive chairman of its subsidiary, Vietnam Venture Group Limited. He has extensive experience in banking and finance and is active in the non-profit sector. He and his wife, Sandra, are longterm Asia residents and have three sons, one in grade 9, one in grade 11, and one who is a recent graduate of SAS. Brent will serve out the remainder of Bart’s term, which expires in October 2012, and will sit on the Finance and Advancement Committees.
Moving Beyond Self
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he way teens imagine themselves to appear to others is fundamental in the formation of their identity, but herein lies a fundamental problem. You see, quite often when teens compare themselves to others it’s not by viewing their external attributes relative to those of another, but rather by comparing their internal perceptions of themselves to the external attributes of another. Did you get that? Teens look internally and then compare what they find to what they observe externally in others. To combat this, pop psychology asserts that teens need to develop a healthy sense of self. Such commonly used terms to describe this include selfesteem and self-image. However, as long as the mirror of life reflects on “self,” teens will struggle with developing a healthy sense of identity. With newly developing cognitive abilities, adolescence is a time when young people seriously begin to question who they are, what they believe and most importantly why they believe it. Paramount to answering these questions is the need for kids to have external standards by which they can accurately evaluate themselves. Over the course of a child’s life these external standards become internalized and form the foundation of their identity. This then begs the question, what are these standards? What are the proverbial filters that kids run their thoughts through in order to determine self
By Jeff Devens, Ph.D. HS Psychologist
worth? For example, if the majority of a person’s worth is based on works (i.e., what classes they take, what grades they earn, what college they get into), then the value they place on themselves will vacillate much like a pendulum. At some level, this may account for the dramatic day-to-day mood swings that comprise adolescents’ lives. I recently had a conversation with a senior who was visibly distraught. “I don’t want to be known as the person who could only get into her safety school.” She described her four years at SAS not in terms of learning, growth and accomplishment, but rather as a series of failures and disappointments, culminating with being rejected by her first choice university. Her overall selfperception and worth were directly tied to what she accomplished, earned and achieved. (For the record, she earned close to a 4.0 GPA.) Never mind her consistent effort, positive attitude, disciplined work ethic and contributions to the school and community. Her culminating comment was, “Life’s not fair!” Indeed, life is not fair, but what an important lesson to learn and to deal with. Setbacks and disappointments provide opportunities to refine and strengthen, in so far as kids have healthy skills to self-evaluate. In this regard, one of the most important tools parents can provide kids is the
ability to pause and reflect on who they are and from where their worth ultimately is derived. Parents, what messages are you communicating to your children regarding their value and worth? What proverbial filters or tools do they have to accurately gauge themselves relative to the world at large? In other words, what are the morals and values you are imparting that will help your children to know themselves, grow to like themselves and find satisfaction in being themselves? Identity development is a process that involves pain, struggle and trial. To some degree kids are directly responsible for the pain they experience based on their not-so-good choices. However, life will also do a good job of providing opportunities for character growth that have absolutely nothing to do with making poor choices; hence, life’s not fair. Working through and overcoming setbacks is needed in order to produce healthy adults, yet without parental guidance, kids may spend a lifetime in search of significance.
I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am. Sociologist Robert Bierstedt
www.sas.edu.sg
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