Middle Years

Success  

This week we held our first Middle Years Assembly, where our Middle Years Prefects spoke about success. They explained that success is something that you must define for yourself, and no one can do it for you. It may mean a sense of giving back to the world and making a difference or it could mean a sense of accomplishment, academic or sporting achievement for example. A one-size-fits-all approach for success is impossible and it doesn’t mean copying what someone else is doing as a metric of your own worth. 

The Prefects asked students to picture what it looks like when they are performing at their best, embodying the characteristics they admire and accomplishing everything they wanted. Then they encouraged students to ask themselves, are these your goals, or are they based on the expectations of someone else? 

This process of assessing what students imagine against what they truly desire is powerful. It enables them to highlight the goals that mean the most to them — and stops them chasing the ones that may be less relevant or don’t matter. 

When deciding what success looks like for you as an individual, one must think about the daily steps that need to be taken to achieve it, which builds hope. Of course, it will be hard work as every big achievement takes hard work, but the work itself must feel rewarding. Success develops from a willingness to try repeatedly for a breakthrough — to work hard towards an important goal of your own. 

I hope all the Middle Years students had a chance to think about what success looks like for themselves and develop clear steps that they will need to take to accomplish success in all aspects of their schooling.