Today’s a new day and the future is bright. Photo by David Fitzpatrick.
Tis the season for awards and results. Parents around the country have sat through speech nights and award ceremonies en masse. Some will be celebrating successes, others will be focusing on their children’s OTHER talents rather than academic achievement. If need be tongue rolling can be considered a highly sought after skill if that’s all you’ve got to work with on the day. ALL parents will be nursing numb bums from sitting on those plastic chairs for hours on end.
Of course for some the stakes will be higher than normal, those who are receiving HSC results and ATAR scores. The culmination of 13 years of schoolin’ all boiled down to that one text message/logged in result check (apparently the wait for the mail is a thing of the past).
There will be kids and parents shrieking with the delight at numbers good. Entry to courses assured. To those I say congratulations, you’ve worked hard with focus and determination and you deserve the marks you’ve got. You’ve given yourself options and the freedom to do whatever it is you want with your life.
Others will be nursing disappointment. Didn’t quite crack the mark needed, screwed up on a subject or two, had a bad day/month/year and things didn’t go as planned, or maybe you got a bit distracted by other things and didn’t pay quite enough attention to that HSC thing everyone was banging on about.
To all of you I say the HSC/ATAR does not define you as a person, it is just one tick box on a lifetime of experiences. A disappointing score won’t stop you travelling, meeting interesting people, falling in love, learning new things. It doesn’t even stop you following your passion, if there is something you really, really want to do you will find a way to make it happen. In fact passion will take you a lot further than a single number awarded in a convoluted scaling process that takes your HSC marks churns them through some algorithm of insanity and spits out a result nobody understands. Computer says no. Well bugger that I say, pack up your passion and head out into the world confident you have the ability to create your own future, in your own beautiful style, using the many gifts you have that are not measurable in an exam.
And just so you know Edison, Einstein, Dickens, Disney, Elton John and Richard Branson are all school dropouts and Bill Gates gave Harvard the flick after just a year to go on to be a billionaire.
Note – Can someone remember to point me back to this post in two years time when I am the mother of a HSC student?
Love these posts on this topic too – Ignoring the Middle of the Bell Curve, Media Coverage of the VCE Results and The appropriate amount of f***s to give: ATAR Edition
Thanks for those inspiring words, so true and I hope lots of hsc students get to read them. Although there is so much emphasis on the ATAR I think they have trouble believing it. My son got his yesterday & with bonus marks from various sources we think he’s scraped into the course he wanted, but I was very impressed by his maturity during the exams when he overcame his anxiety about marks and focused on alternative pathways to what he wants to do. Also of course very proud. Good luck with it all in two years time 🙂
Well done to your son. I wish there was more discussion on the many, many alternative pathways into uni (or jobs). The world is full of possibilities that don’t rely on just acing the ATAR. Thanks for stopping by.
We got the kids’ report cards last week and I found myself far less worried than I thought about a few “basic”s. And thrilled with “your daughter is a kind and loyal friend”.
You know I soooo miss individual teachers giving comments on each subject. At our high school only the Pastoral Care teacher writes a comment. The subjects just have a grade, a mark and the average mark for the subject. Just numbers. Comments like “kind and loyal” are just as important in the holistic development of a child (and the sanity of the parent) as the marks!
I totally agree ‘You are not the sum of your HSC mark’. As a teacher I ask my class at the end of the year just what they learnt. They will name academic achievements and sport generally. I always tell them that while these things are good the most important thing to learn is that education at school is only a small part of the classroom of life. The world holds so much education. The best thing I want children to learn is that learning happens lifelong.
I really hope my children do emerge from school with a lifelong love of learning but I suspect they will be a bit over it all by the time they finish! I love that you talk to your students at the end of the year about what they have learnt throughout the year inside and outside the classroom.
So true…as both parent and teacher I know the theoretical value of results, but in the real world, they are overrated. I’ve met quite a few stupid academics and some very smart ‘losers’ in the school system! 🙂