As 2024 comes to a close, Mr. Gustavo Páez shares an inspiring message, encouraging us to turn challenges into opportunities. He believes that the achievements of the past year will serve as a driving force for the WASS community to make significant strides in 2025.

We are about to finish the last month of the year, full of various activities prior to the closing of the first semester of the academic year 2024 – 2025. Many reflections bring to mind to continue to analyze better ways to do our work, provide better attention, as well as promote the general welfare of all who make up the school. 

With this in mind, as we are about to celebrate the New Year 2025, we realize that this journey has been challenging and full of dynamism. We are convinced that the achievements, experiences lived, special memories, and goals to be set now will be the engine that stimulates everything that awaits us in 2025.

In the article by Keisuke Horikoshi, “The positive psychology of challenge: Towards interdisciplinary studies of activities and processes involving challenges”, it is mentioned that for most people, activities and processes involving challenges, including seeking, identifying, taking, embracing, avoiding, persevering, and overcoming them, are naturally part of life, as they have been throughout the history of humanity. 

In dictionaries, a challenge is described as “a new or difficult task or situation that tests somebody’s ability and skill” (Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries, n.d.) and as something that can be interpreted as an opportunity (APA Dictionary of Psychology, n.d.). Scholars have studied activities and processes involving the concept of challenge in various disciplines, including psychology. Societal needs in our time of rapid change and global challenges have also highlighted the importance of activities and processes involving challenges concerning well-being. 

Let’s learn to value the challenges and problems that are presented to us, to be a great individual and collective opportunity to demonstrate the skills, critical thinking, and strategies that we have to put into practice, and make that routine problem-solving prepositive, a competitive advantage that will give our students the confidence to make a difference. 

Best wishes to all of you this holiday season and an excellent year ahead.

Warm regards,

Mr. Gustavo Páez

Principal of International Programs