I'll be guest speaker giving a talk to the boys and girls whom I hope will be keeping me on my toes in years to come at the Celebrating Success event held on the 30th June and 1st July at South East Essex College.

The event aims to highlight the academic achievements of students from a number of colleges and sixth form schools.

The presentation I'm giving on the two nights will focus on two key areas.  The first of which is "well done kids, you made it through your education!".  I'm delighted that students are being rewarded for their efforts on such a large scale.  However the second area I'll focus on will be to inform them how much of an uphill struggle they still have ahead of them.

Obviously I won't want to put a downer on the evening so I'll have to be careful in my approach.  However it's important in my view for students to understand that their grade 'A' qualifications are not going to generate them an income.  Jobs offering a six figure salary will not magically appear and unfortunately they still have many thousands of hard working hours ahead of them before they will reap any kind of serious reward.

I know this because I left college six years ago and even now don't like to use the word 'successful' and Atlas in the same sentence.  We 'do okay' is as positive a response as you would get out of me.  This isn't because Atlas isn't successful; I just believe that we're only half way up Everest.  If I were to start throwing words like successful around this would indicate to the outside world that Atlas has achieved everything it is capable of and this simply is not true.

I hope by applying this logic to the students at the presentation it will make them realise that although they are successful on an academic basis there is still much more for them to achieve.