7 minute read
FROM CORIO TO THE WORLD
Sam Parsons (P’14)
It is a long way from a meat factory on the banks of the Barwon River to the Deutsche Bank building in downtown New York, but when Sam Parsons (P’14) looks out at the bustle of Wall Street, he does not forget the 10 months he spent working at a Geelong meat factory right after leaving school: “I knew that I would aspire to be a leader later in life, and that my career would involve making decisions that impact other people’s lives. I wanted to understand, on a personal level, the experiences of people working blue-collar jobs. I didn’t want to be a person who is oblivious to the impact of their decisions on others. I’m proud of the time I spent at the factory on the Barwon; it was formative and keeps me humble”.
Sam’s current role as an investment banking analyst with Deutsche Bank followed his graduation from Princeton in 2019 where he majored in public policy and philosophy. An all-round high achiever, Sam left Geelong Grammar School at the end of 2014 having been School Captain and a member of the First VIII. He graduated with a perfect IB score that crowned him Dux of the School, shared with Zoe Yang (Ga’14). As impressive as these achievements are, it is Sam’s wholehearted, profound gratitude for the support he has received from others throughout his GGS journey and beyond that is the true measure of the man. “The benefactors who supported me have, in a sense, enabled the trajectory of my entire life. I find that people on scholarships often feel that it’s a kind of disadvantage, that their place in the community is fragile because it depends on something external. I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. Being a scholar was an honour and a responsibility. Someone else has made a sacrifice to facilitate your education, and that is empowering.”
Sam was a double scholarship recipient at GGS. His academic scholarship, awarded by the School, drove Sam to ensure that he was a good student, not just for himself but as a contributor in the classroom, enabling others to thrive too. “I’m not saying that’s what I was thinking about when I was 14 years old, but it was an abstract sentiment that stayed with me throughout my time at the School. Gratitude manifests in motivation. The people in my cohort who were supported by scholarships were extremely high achieving people. We kept each other motivated and honest. Scholarships are very effective at bringing an exceptional group of people together, and that is of great benefit to everyone at the School.”
His second scholarship was much more personal, “because I was honouring a person’s memory”. Awarded by the Pierce Armstrong Foundation, the Nicholas Pierce (FB’60) Scholarship commemorates a young Old Geelong Grammarian who was killed in a road accident in 1966 at the age of 23 by supporting someone from a rural area to access a global education. Sam met Toni Armstrong, sister of Nicholas Pierce and mother of Nick Armstrong (FB’94), several times and the two corresponded regularly. “It was very vivid for me. I knew the person who was making my education possible and I carry so much gratitude for that generosity now.”
Sam considers the elements of his education that occurred beyond the classroom, within the wider arc of daily life in a busy boarding school, to be an extremely important benefit of his scholarship. Coming from Shepparton in rural Victoria, 12-yearold Sam viewed GGS as an urban school where opportunities abounded. He vividly recalls his first day in Barwon House, and the excitement of meeting new friends from vastly different backgrounds: “Realising how much I could learn through these friendships was my first anecdotal experience of being in a more cosmopolitan environment, and I really enjoyed it”. Community events, such as House Music and House Swimming, were much more than competitions to Sam: “They were truly epic moments. The people in the auditorium or the pool comprised my whole world, and sharing in the excitement of arts and sports on that scale was an incredible feeling. The root of that passion is not some sort of animalistic tribalism; it comes from the fact that you are rooting for your friends. We were all so personally connected to everyone on campus.”
Sam left Geelong Grammar at the end of 2014 having been School Captain and a member of the First VIII.
Some of Sam’s most meaningful connections were forged with teachers, who were mentors as well as educators. It was because of the encouragement of Andy Beauchamp, who knew Sam well, that he applied to a university as prestigious as Princeton. “Beaucho basically pitched the idea to me that I should apply. More importantly, he pitched it with a straight face. It wasn’t a far-fetched pipe dream to him; I could tell he believed that I could do it, which made all the difference. I approached the prospect seriously and explored the possibilities. Princeton was the perfect fit for a swathe of reasons, including its location, its leading academic programmes, and its strong focus on policy, which was my interest at the time. I wanted to move abroad to expand my sense of community and learn osmotically by living in another culture and system.” Although their relationship began formally, with Andy as Sam’s science teacher, in adulthood Sam now looks on Andy as a friend, with whom he keeps in regular contact.
Since starting at Princeton, Sam has worked for a hedge fund in Tokyo, interned in Melbourne and London, travelled across the United States, and worked for the American Civil Liberties Union. He soon plans to travel to Mexico and Indonesia to work with an emerging-market venture capital fund and a tech-enabled logistics start-up, having deferred his admission to Harvard Law School where he will commence study of the Juris Doctor in September 2022. The access to a cosmopolitan global education offered by the Nicholas Pierce Scholarship has been truly enacted for Sam, and in return it is global policy challenges where he next intends to focus his efforts. “The issues that motivate me are those that touch all the people I have come to know in my studies and travels – climate change, mass population displacement, resource scarcity and its ensuing conflicts. My goal coming out of law school, in the abstract, will be to work on political system design and international protocols that align the actions of business and public sector institutions to address those challenges.”
It remains to be seen whether Sam will address these challenges through entrepreneurship and innovation, international institutions like the UN, or by coming back to Australia and leveraging the experience he has gained abroad to help his home country navigate its place in the world. “I’m 25 years old and the only burden that I have is choice, and it’s a great privilege to be in this position. I want to live a life of service, though I’m not always convinced that classical service roles in government are the most impactful. My present objective is to gain as much experience as I can across as many fields as possible, to be better prepared for the future.” Whatever he decides, he will remember the advice of the late Hon. Frank Callaway, who ran the Philosophy Club at GGS. “Justice Callaway advised me that before choosing the industry one wants to work in, or the cause to which one wants to dedicate their efforts, one should uncover the type of thinker that one wants to be, whether quantitative or qualitative, analytical or philosophical, logical or creative. Geelong Grammar prepared me well for this level of introspection. At GGS, it is character and community, not career, which is cultivated first and foremost.”
Sam describes himself as a legal and philosophical thinker. The nuanced puzzles of metaphysics and the nature of objectivity are ones that fired his brain at Princeton. It was not at the Ivy League university, however, that he first explored the validity of subjectivity in worldviews. The realisation that people could have competing yet legitimate beliefs and values occurred in Jenny Arton-Powell’s Year 8 RE class: “To my rational, perhaps overconfident young mind it was initially difficult to grasp – surely there has to be an objective truth! But Mrs AP taught the concept well, and it was formative to my entire academic outlook. At GGS subjectivity was discussed in the context of faith; at Princeton the theme emerged in the context of America’s extreme political polarisation and diversity of thought. But it’s incredible to think that I remember who taught me that idea in a Geelong Grammar classroom. It’s but one of many profound and vivid memories I enjoy from my time at GGS.”
