Farewelling our Year 12s PROF. RICHARD PAGE, CHAIR OF COUNCIL
Staff and students continued their amazing flexibility in flipping from in-person to remote learning for the umpteenth time, and making the most of the different learning environments from Term 3 to 4. However, no matter how adaptive our community has been during remote learning, nothing beats the real thing. Schools are an empty place without student voices echoing along corridors. It was a pleasure to be able to share the Valedictory Ceremony with the Year 12 students and staff after yet another absence of students from version six of the lockdowns, and the subsequent period of remote learning. It was a shame that parents were unable to join in person, however, the IT and audiovisual team did a superb job bringing the event ‘live’ to lounge rooms. This happened not just in our region but also went global to Japan and China to help share the experience with the families of the finishing international students. An amazing feat, that would have been hard to imagine just a few years ago. To that end, I share with you the thoughts imparted with the finishing Year 12s: Well class of 2021, it has been an interesting year and it is natural to
4 Ad Astra Issue No 141
reflect on what has happened as your time at school comes to a close. What do we mean by interesting? An adjective – describing the quality of a noun. Meaning arousing curiosity or interest; holding or catching attention. Synonyms: Absorbing, engrossing, fascinating, riveting. All good words for the English exam. English is a fascinating language and a word like interesting can take on many inflections: Like – interesting / fascinating!! Or ‘interrrestinggg’…. Implying the opposite - for a lot of us this year we may lean towards the latter. We reflect not just the year that has passed, but on all your time at The Geelong College - for some, it is most of your life to this point in time. In many
ways it may feel like 2021 didn’t pan out quite as we had planned. In fact, this is true for all of us in many ways – but plans seldom do. Don’t lose sleep about the things you cannot control but spend time figuring out the things that you can influence and then make a plan on how to tackle those. Be confident, knowing that you are prepared for the future. It is said that nothing prepares for action better than a crisis. Well, you can all say that over last two years you have lived through a global crisis, a scenario that is a one in 100-year event. What does that mean? What will happen - next week, next month, next year? All good questions, and like many good questions they don’t have simple answers.
