Raising Brilliant Brains

When I was growing up, my family put such a premium on academic excellence that I sometimes wished I was part of another family. My brothers were just too brilliant for me to match.

Dad was the driving force behind my family's focus on academic excellence. He bought us plenty of books, magazines and newspapers. But it was my immediate older brother Paddy who became the star in our family.

I vividly recall my brother Bob predicting that Paddy's academic performance would take a nosedive when he got into Standard Four in 1995. How wrong he was! Paddy star didn't diminish.

Not only did Paddy excel in upper primary school but also during his high school years at Starehe Boys' Centre. In one 2002 school term, Dr. Griffin, the then director of Starehe, described his performance as splendid, an interesting word I had not heard before.

But it was at the University of Nairobi where Paddy shone the most. He graduated with two bachelors' degrees and an MBA. And the bachelors' degrees were hard stuff. One was anatomy, the other was medicine and surgery.

Unlike Paddy, my performance in school went up and down like a yo-yo. In the third term of 1997 when I was in Standard Four, I emerged tops in my class. But when I got into to Standard Five, my performance went down.

Come December 2001, I gave my family a surprise when I did well in KCPE exams and made it to Starehe where Paddy was a student. I didn't do that well in the school because I was schooling with brilliant schoolmates. But what mattered was that I scored an 'A' in KCSE exams.

The 'A' secured me a spot at JKUAT where I enrolled at JKUAT in May 2007 to pursue an engineering degree. But then again, my performance went down. I dropped out of the university in 2009.

Although I didn't shine steadily in school, I picked up a culture of reading and writing that has enhanced the quality of my life. So I'd like to thank Dad for raising brilliant brains that challenged me to do better. I think I am also a brilliant now. Am I?

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