Congratulating our Duces of School

Tegan Burns and Vivian Jin

Our Dux of School Assembly is an annual tradition when the School proudly recognises and celebrates the outstanding achievements of the graduating class.

On this occasion, we honoured our 2019 Duces of School, Tegan Burns and Vivian Jin, who both achieved an ATAR of 99.9, our Duces of Subjects, students who received Perfect Scores of 50 and other special prize winners and high achieving students. An excerpt from each Dux Address is presented below.

Tegan Burns

I am constantly in awe of the sheer number of girls who willingly choose to do something as conventionally unenjoyable as running. This positive culture is infectious, and we are so fortunate that there is a collaborative environment and desire to work which results in everyone outperforming both in the classroom and beyond. Year 12 was the best year and this is mostly thanks to the wonderful Class of 2019. Yes, a large chunk consisted of endless hours of hard work. I spent countless hours in Maths help and regularly sacrificed lunchtimes to write essays. However, I also spent my share of study periods eating popcorn and discussing weekend plans, and nights midessay when I decided to go to bed. My advice is that you learn to recognise when you need a break and capitalise on the times when you are most productive, even if this means setting a 5.00am alarm like I did most mornings. The biggest myth about Year 12 is that you have to sacrifice your life, and my biggest tip would be to maintain your co-curricular activities. My granddad always said “if you need to get a job done, give to a busy person.” As counterintuitive as it may sound, having commitments that you need to work around will make you more focused and force you to get study done when you need to. Finding the perfect balance is not easy, and I had a full term of being sick before I managed to shift my load, continue my activities, have a social life and maintain school as my first priority. There is no doubt that at some point, Year 12 will feel insurmountable. Fortunately, it is the unwavering faith and support of teachers that will get you through; the staff at Loreto Toorak are wholeheartedly invested in their girls.

Vivian Jin

Eight years ago when I walked through the gates for the first time as the shy, new girl, little did I know that this would be a place where I would feel a sense of security and deep connection. Loreto Toorak has provided us with invaluable opportunities to try new things through the extensive co-curricular program, and given us the ability to be curious and to question, through its focus on social justice. But my most vivid memories are of the camps, the trivial dramas, the homeroom chats, the heart-warming emails and cards from teachers and friends. So, I urge you to not rush past these small moments, because one day you will look back and treasure the days that you once found so ordinary. Performing still remains one of the most exciting yet terrifying things that I do, but it was through the extraordinary music program at Loreto Toorak that I found the courage to express who I am. Through hours of rehearsing, it also taught me the importance of persistence and discipline - paramount during Year 12, and indeed too, in life. At the beginning of VCE, having had to give up other much-loved subjects, I made the difficult decision to take Chinese. Now, you might be thinking, she’s Chinese right, she must be good at Chinese. But whilst I could speak it, my reading and writing skills were very poor. I remember receiving a message from my uncle in China, asking me what I wanted to do whilst I was there on holiday. I thought I had replied with, “I want to go see pandas”, but because the same pinyin can take on many different characters, I found out later that I had actually written “I want to see chest hair”. So, completing VCE Chinese was no easy task for me. I remember feeling overwhelmed by the hours of work the subject demanded, because my foundations in it were not as strong as my other subjects. However, the more mistakes I made, the more determined I was to understand why I was making them, and then to rectify it. Something I came to realise was that how well you ultimately perform, is not how many A’s you start with, but a measure of how many obstacles you’re willing to overcome.