Dominic’s Principal’s Message for the end of Term 4 is his address to our Year 13 students from their Senior Celebration Evening on Monday 2 December.
Tēnā koutou katoa
Firstly, I watched the final game of our senior A boys volleyball just over a week ago. They asked if I would mention them in a Principal’s message or in some forum. So this is my shout out to our boys volleyball players. Actually, I watched the senior A girls on the same afternoon so it’s a shout out to both teams. And both teams have some players for whom that was their last game of sport in the celebrated green, red and yellow of Wellington High School.
This shout out is also a nice segue into the first thing that I want to say this evening. Most students will know that I spend time at school encouraging them to get involved in some way, whether it be sports, clubs or cultural activities. I do this because I notice time and again that students who are involved in these other ways at school, also perform better academically. I believe this is because these activities connect them better with school, with other people, they make school a better place to be, they are happier and therefore they do better. I’ve said this plenty of times but the reason I say this tonight is because I want to encourage you to continue to get involved in ‘stuff’. All of those things are much easier when you are at school and there is a lot more effort involved in getting involved in sport or other activities once you leave. You will notice that there aren’t DnD clubs at your fingertips but put in the effort, and keep involved.
And this is the point of my speech this evening. Some advice from me for what the next part of your life looks like. To provide this advice I have combined some of my own thoughts with the advice of others. James Shaw, an ex-student of Wellington High School, celebrated with us last year and he spoke of his own career path, comparing it to a sailor in a sailboat who has an endpoint in sight but tacks from side to side using the wind and currents to get to that point. You will have goals, career goals, life goals, relationship goals, and you will have a point that you want to reach but it won’t always be a direct journey. There will be deviations, there will be other paths you pursue, there will be other places you go and that’s ok and I hope you are able to get used to it. And this is where I’ll lean on my first quote from none other than Dr Seuss, from ‘Oh the Places you’ll Go!”
“You’ll get mixed up, of course, as you already know.
You’ll get mixed up with many strange birds as you go.
So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act.
Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.”
My second piece of advice comes from George Clooney. He said in an interview that he received a piece of advice from his father which was the following:
“I don’t care what you do in life, but challenge people with greater power than you and defend those with less power”.
In other words, be empathetic and be aware and use whatever position you hold to enable good to occur. Leo Tolstoy encourages us similarly:
“If you feel pain you are alive, but if you feel the pain of others you are human”;
and from Voltaire: “The only way to see oneself is in the eyes of others”.
In a similar vein I want to encourage you to get to understand some of your responsibilities that come with ‘growing up’. You are fortunate to live in a democracy and I’m sure you know of many in the world who don’t live in as fortunate a political space as you do. However, democracy also comes with responsibilities because governments and politicians will do things that you like and other things that you don’t like. So it’s important to enrol to vote, and then it’s important that once you’ve enrolled you actually do vote! And it’s also important to know that you can change stuff and it’s important that you do. Everyone knows Greta Thunberg. Greta is 21 years old. When she was 15 she started skipping school to protest outside the Swedish parliament calling for stronger action on climate change. I’m sure you have all seen the pictures of her solitary protests which quickly grew into world wide movements. One person can change the world. Greta said this in 2018, when she was 15:
“In the year 2078, I will celebrate my 75th birthday. If I have children or grandchildren, maybe they will spend that day with me. Maybe they will ask me about you, the people who were around back in 2018. Maybe they will ask why you didn’t do anything while there still was time to act. What we do or don’t do right now, will affect my entire life and the lives of my children and grandchildren.”
My fourth piece of advice is about embracing what’s around you. To help me here, I have a source very close to home – our own Tony Munro in year 11 who submitted a beautiful piece of writing this year titled “The sky is not supposed to be empty” to our Avocado Press, a repository of creative writing. Tony writes:
“Walk along the sandy beach. Feel the fingers of the vast ocean gently licking your feet, see the beauty of the sunset reflected in the geometric seashells that line the shore, bright, flowing streaks of orange and pink, the promise it’ll happen all over again tomorrow. Feel the petals of the wildflowers that grow through the cracks of the concrete sea, their miraculous softness in a place of man-made suffering.”
In a similar vein and finally, I have to share something that I shared with the leaving class last year. It’s from Nick Cave from the Red Hand files:
“Read. Read as much as possible. Read the big stuff, the challenging stuff, the confronting stuff, and read the fun stuff too. Visit galleries and look at paintings, watch movies, listen to music, go to concerts – be a little vampire running around the place sucking up all the art and ideas you can. Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world. Have fun. Get amazed. Get astonished. Get awed on a regular basis, so that getting awed is habitual and becomes a state of being.”
Congratulations to all our prizewinners this evening but a special congratulations to all of you for making it here, the end of your school journey. And I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening with your peers!
Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa