So you studied really hard and got good grades.

 Congratulations! You are more likely to be congratulated for succeeding than consoled for failing. What do they say - the world loves winners.

Yet we cannot all be winners. For every person who wins, there is a host of ordinary folk who do not quite make the grade. Does that mean only the winners are important? Not at all. Human activity functions only because there are huge numbers of people out there working at the multitude of tasks that keep it all running.

Without all these others there would be no food in the supermarkets, no electricity, no transport, no coffee .... do you need me to go on? Yes, it is a fact that we would all grind to a halt sitting in front of dead televisions each evening (assuming we could see them in the dark).

A famous British scientist, Isaac Newton, (see -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton) once sat under a tree and observed an apple fall from a bough and thereby came up with the theory of gravity. This is an apocryphal story, but it does remind you that what goes up must come down. Olympic champions grow old and fashion models lose their looks, but ordinary mortals like us, who may not have been the best in the class, are still out there doing a worthwhile job.

The writer is the director of Mentor International. Visit www.Mentor.ac.