F O U N D AT I O N D AY
Foundation Day 2020 Foundation Day in February gave the BGS community an opportunity to celebrate the School’s 152-year history, congratulate a Rhodes scholar and think about the technology of the future. In his opening remarks, Headmaster Anthony Micallef spoke of the School’s foundation in 1868, and how the years from 1869 to 1918 were interrupted by conflict. “During that first 80 years of the School’s history, Brisbane Grammar School benefited from the sacrifices of those who had gone before, and an educational philosophy of hard work,” Mr Micallef
said. “Today’s modern school owes a great debt to this period.”
were just emerging when he finished at BGS in 1998.
Mr Micallef also asked the boys to reflect on how they could continue the School’s legacy and make a difference to a quickly changing world. “Rapid developments in robotics and artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, fifth generation wireless technologies, 3D printing, nanotechnology and biotechnology are all shaping our world, and we need to know how to respond,” he said.
“The company I work for was founded in 1999, the $3 billion human genome project was published the year after that, and my current role has only been around for five years,” Kumarasuriyar said. “How do you plan to work in an industry that barely exists, for a company that hasn’t been founded, in a job that no one has heard of yet? The answer is you don’t; not really. You embrace the non-linear career path… The degree you do doesn’t dictate what you spend the rest of your life doing, it’s just the start.”
BGS Old Boy Arjuna Kumarasuriyar ‘98 took up this theme as the Foundation Day guest speaker. He told the boys that answering the question, ‘What will you do when you finish school?’ requires flexibility. The fields of biotechnology and genome sequencing
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Kumarasuriyar also spoke of the importance of living by the dictum nil sine labore, and shared anecdotes with the boys from his school days and career
