Starting a new year of school is always exciting, with most students eager to see all their friends again from the long summer holidays. To some, this could be making new friends as they start their own journey at Eddies. Despite all the excitement around meeting new people and reconnecting with your returning peers, settling back into the academic lifestyle can be challenging. We’ve all spent our holidays relaxing, enjoying our off time and probably not writing one thousand-word essays for English. Which means most of our focus hasn’t calibrated just yet, which isn’t really an issue because the school provides us with enough guidance to ease us back into the routine. Reserving some time after school to recap what you’ve learnt in class could be a way to set your mind to the academic side of things. Guidance from the staff and our parents always help towards easing our way back to the routine.
Not only does starting a new year provide excitement and challenges, there are also the multitude of co-curricular opportunities available for all students to participate in. The range is quite broad, with many on the sporting side to performing arts or even recreational activities. These co-curriculars aid in providing a balanced school lifestyle, which is important to the growth of us as students but also as individuals. The advertisement of these co-curriculars are quite effective, but really its up to us as students to take them on. One of the common mindsets when it comes taking on such opportunities is always to pick those you are most comfortable with, which is by no means a bad mindset. Yet when we have a slight interest in something that might be out of our comfort zone, we tend to back off from the opportunity. Instead we should be going out and taking on these opportunities, because then we get to test the capabilities of our skills and the activities we might be interested in.
This is especially important during the start of the year, where there are so many opportunities to grow across all aspects of your life. As this puts to fruition what I think the aim of school is, not only to condition children to become productive citizens that can utilise their skills towards the advancement of society, sustain themselves and help each other but also to aid in discovering themselves. The sense of finding out what it is they truly enjoy and being able to live their lives working on their craft. Everything else will just follow right after. Of course, this doesn’t happen unless we keep exploring our opportunities and trying them. With the support and encouragement of our peers, teachers, parents and community, every student can achieve their own excellence today and become the leaders of tomorrow.
Symon Refuerzo (College Captain)