Valedictory2024 

Mullauna Alumni

Valedictorians 2024 - Samantha Ratnam  (Class of 1994)

I acknowledge that we are meeting on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation and pay my respects to elders past and present. 

It is an honour to celebrate this very special evening with you all. Congratulations to all of you, the class of 2024, on reaching a milestone bringing together years of work and life.  You are about to close one chapter and welcome the next. 

As a Mullauna alumni – from the class of 1994, it is extra special to have this opportunity to join with you, and my first time back since I left!  I feel a bit like Marty McFly in ‘Back to the Future’ in the gym scene. In many ways, I feel like I am bringing a message from the future back to this place that was so much of my past – and will be an indelible part of your past too. 

I’d like to tell you this from the future.

I could have never dreamed it possible when I was a nervous 17-year-old, about to sit my final exams, that one day I would get elected to parliament. Things are going to happen in your life that you never dreamed possible. 

You are possibly hearing a lot of people trying to convince you that the number you get at the end of your school journey doesn’t define you.  You may also be thinking – that these are people trying to prepare you for disappointment if you don’t achieve the result you had hoped for. I remember when people said similar things to me, that they were already lowering their expectations for what I could achieve. It took me quite a while to realise that those people were right, but not in the way I understood. 

The result you get will make you feel things of course. It can’t not, given how much emphasis there is on it. However, I soon realised that it’s not the result that is actually defining, but how you make sense of it that shapes the success of your result. 

In the years after leaving high school, I started to realise that the number isn’t that important at all. Perhaps it will help you get to the next step you want – like a higher education course or program, but you generally never refer to it much. But how you make sense of it is what you will carry. 

So, I thought I would share with you what my result meant to me. 

It meant choosing subjects that I really loved but perhaps slightly unconventional in some sense. I did English, Maths Methods, Biology, Chemistry and Politics.  I was an arts and science student and that was the course I wanted to get into. I did get into a combined arts and science double degree because I loved them both so much. 

My result reminds me of my Maths teacher, Mr Howe – so smart and dedicated to us all. My eloquent English teacher, Ms McCubbin who taught me how to critically analyse the media – a skill I use today. It reminds me about Ms Chapman, my detailed and focussed biology teacher. Mr Atkins my warm chemistry teacher who made me change the way I study and learn, a technique that worked for me. My results also remind me of Mr Veer and Mr K, my politics teachers in years 11 and 12, who passed on their contagious love of politics. I remember Mr McGoldrick – our year 10 coordinator who cared about my sister in I in a way that we hadn’t experienced at school before. 

As migrant kids, we were used to moving around a lot. We had to leave our home in Sri Lanka because civil war broke out. We moved to Canada before arriving in Australia as we started high school. By the time my sister and I arrived at Mullauna in year 8, we had been to five schools and three continents in two and half years. We were ready and needed to settle. 

We arrived at Mullauna when it was 3 campuses! We were based at Donvale and Dunlavin but I spent a lot of time here (at Mitcham) in the music program. All this reminds me about the community that we were able to be part of with the arts program and the friendships we built. 

I also met an incredible group of friends in year 12 – we had come from all different places, but we really connected. A number of us also got into the same university. So, if you ask me about my year 12 result, I think about these people and how I got to hang out with them for years after university as we entered adulthood together.   While I never thought it was possible to actually be a politician or get involved, I took with me the love and learning from Mullauna and especially Mr K, into studying politics at university and social work. 

What does my result mean to me? This is what it means to me. Thinking about my result brings back all these memories of people. It reminds me of how much I’ve grown and changed and done. I’m so thankful for this school community for giving us stability and care and a chance to launch into the future. 

So, savour every moment of the coming months especially. There will be a lot of pressure, expectation and hope. But if there is one thing that I can leave with you tonight as a messenger from the future, is that the numbers vanish into the distance, but the memories and meaning will stay with you forever. 

I can’t wait to see what you all do in this next chapter. I look forward to maybe seeing some of you in our parliaments of the future – or wherever you desire to go. One thing I can tell you for sure – is that your future self will look back at this moment and tell you this, things you wouldn’t have dreamed possible - can one day become a reality. 

Dream big everyone!

Samantha Ratnam

Member of the Legislative Council for the Northern Metropolitan Region

Parliament of Victoria