At our Welcome Assembly Matilda Paradisis (Class of 2024), shared her journey of resilience, self-discovery and success.

Matilda spoke about overcoming self-doubt, understanding her ADHD, and pushing herself beyond limits she once thought impossible.

Matilda's message? Growth comes from discipline, mindset, and surrounding yourself with the right people. From struggling with focus to earning a 96.3 ATAR and studying a double degree at Monash, her story is a testament to the power of belief and hard work.

Thank you, Matilda, for inspiring our students to chase their dreams with passion and determination! 💙

Ms Hayley Dureau

Assistant Principal

Hello all, you'll have to excuse me, I have an incredible fear of public speaking. I'll most likely be shaking and trying to catch my breath throughout this entire speech but I'll do the best I can.

To succeed you have to begin to understand yourself. For me that was researching my ADHD. My whole entire life I thought I had a focusing problem, a problem which made me unable to stay on task, to not be distracted. What I had was an interest problem, because what I have is an interest based brain. This means that if there was a boring task I had to complete I just simply wouldn't be able to get myself to do it, and i didnt know why at that point. Why couldn't I do such simple things everyone else could? Why couldn't I just sit there and focus? So I decided to research myself.

What I found was the lack of dopamine in a brain like mine, a brain with ADHD, was causing me to have a lack of motivation, that was the problem. Because I could focus, I knew that when I wanted to I could focus. But it wasn't until year 11 that I knew this, So from there I began to change things around me that were directly related to the problem. My phone wasn't the problem, the wind moving that tree by my window wasn't the problem, and my parents shutting that door too loud wasn't the problem either, I was the problem.

I started listening to motivational speeches, on the way to school through my airpods, or in my car, or even while i was crying before a SAC. and in turn, my internal monologue began to change, and instead of “im so tired”, it became “I’m a lion”. Instead of “I don't understand this, I need a break” it became “I’m gonna work harder than anyone else in that room”. I could then sit at my desk with my phone next to me and not touch it for hours, I could pour myself into my work to the point where it became a game, a game I loved to play.

To get ahead and to achieve what you want will only be possible if you understand yourself and work with tools that will genuinely benefit you to the point where it all excites you. I worked myself so hard all year, even throughout Year 11 so I could set myself up with tools I could use for Year 12. Towards exams I was studying for 12 hours a day with three half an hour breaks every four hours. It was hard, but because I set myself up and I had tools to make it enjoyable, rather than having a mind telling me to give up.

Right now, this is the first time in two years I've ever had a break from VCE, and I actually miss it. And to be honest I was actually upset after the last exam I had. I wanted to keep going. Because with the right tools, with the right mindset and the belief in yourself to keep going, with an image of your dream at the end of the tunnel, you won't be able to stop that momentum.

There were definitely times where I felt like I was losing my mind, and I had been studying for hours and I would think, I haven't made enough progress, I haven't memorised enough of these terms yet, I don't know this well enough. But through time I realised that every step is progress, and whether you're having a bad or a good day, planning well and having the ability to reassure yourself will get you further than you think. If you have given yourself a week to study before a sac, one bad day will not cost you, but giving yourself two days is not taking into account that you are human, and you are bound to miss that 8am alarm to get started.

But before my success there were also a lot of failures, and you often dont really hear about stuff like this, but I wanna tell you all about mine. I was a kid with undiagnosed ADHD, thinking I just couldn't do the stuff everyone else could, I thought I was lazy, that I would hopefully turn out like walt disney or steve jobs, and invent something so cool that I wouldn't have to do this school stuff, because it just wasn't meant for me. I was just different.

My parents got divorced when I was in year 7 which just turned my life upside down. I lived in china for 4 and a half years and thailand for 1 and a half years, and so part of me just always felt different, and now that my parents weren't together, I wasn't sure who I was anymore. My attendance dropped, I didn't do any work in any of my classes for years, and it got so bad I wasn't allowed to do a VCE subject in year 10 because of how bad my attendance was.

I had people telling me I couldn't do it, that I was going to be nothing, that I was a joke. And I kept telling them all, I'll do all this work in Year 11. So when Year 11 came up, I had something to prove. I had the best job in the world actually, which was proving every person wrong. And that is pretty fun. I went from getting 20% in Year 10 Maths to getting 80s in Year 11, and then to 90s in Year 12. I became a person who never had a pen, to having three different pencil cases. I had teachers who would ask me “what changed??”, and my answer to that was simple.

I changed.

I surrounded myself with people who believed in me, rather than people who didn't. I stopped worrying about what other people thought, and became a person who had tunnel vision to my own goals. I found my amazing friends, who made me smile and laugh, and always built me up and were always happy for all of our successes. I leaned against my amazing supportive parents for help. And most importantly, I believed in myself.

In fact, in Year 10 I got told NOT to do chemistry, that I couldn't do it, and now here I am with an atar of 96.3 with all subjects that scaled down, going to monash university, and majoring in chemistry, as part of my double degree of psychology and science.

You can literally do anything as long as you want it bad enough. The secret is to be obsessed with growth. By that I mean to constantly be raising that standard, that bar you set for yourself. Whether that's with study or just with who you are, keep raising that standard. Because the day you settle for that mark, or you settle with who you are when you didn’t stand up for yourself, the very day you stop evaluating yourself is the day you stop growing, and that is when the person who was trying to keep up with you, will catch you.

In times where I couldn't keep myself going, those handful of times where that strong voice in my head telling me to keep going wasn't enough, I had to search for more reasons, reasons to try harder, to stay up later, and to read 30 more pages of that textbook. Those reasons can be anything. It could be, doing it for all those women out there that never had the chance to do what I was doing. To do it for my parents so they could relax knowing I was going to be okay, or doing it for the planet, knowing that someday, maybe I could save it.

Motivation, however, is not always going to work. To rely so deeply on motivation is to leave your abilities up to chance. What it ultimately comes down to, is discipline. That even when you have nothing pushing you, you find that discipline to push yourself. If you're tired, chances are that everyone else around you is tired too, but what is separating you from those who have given up? Your discipline, your drive and your patterns.

Your pattern of studying must include more than your mind, and I know I've said a lot about your mindset and your internal strength, but you must feed those things with small breaks and carbs. Year 7s, welcome, you must be scared, excited or maybe just indifferent to academia right now, but that's okay. Your job right now is to focus on who you are and the things that make you happy. To enjoy your sports, your tv and begin to create amazing relationships with your new teachers and friends.

Year 8s and 9s, your job is to choose fun electives that make coming to school on monday fun rather than a chore. Pick subjects that will give you a taste of heaps of different options for when you're picking your VCE subjects and find those of similar interests through that journey. Year 10s, your job is to please not stress about your first VCE subject, to chose something you want to do because you will enjoy it, because trust me, a class that you are passionate about even though you may be sitting alone in, is so much better than a class you don't like even if you're with all your friends.

Year 11s, your job is to focus on all your subjects, yes of course your Unit 3 & 4 subject, but all of them, so you can practice juggling more than one subject next year.

Year 12s, your job is to do your absolute best. To ask for help, and always go to your teachers when you need them, I did and I created some of the most memorable relationships with my teachers and principals, that truly helped me every single day.

Ms Duggan, Ms Colmanet, Mr Seah, Ms Lawler and Ms Demirova, always moved mountains to help me, sent long emails back to me mornings of a SAC, and made me laugh in moments of impending stress. Your teachers are there for you, they are your school parents.

In addition to that, please don't stress about scaling or the atar calculator, it is a distractor that only defeats you. Scaling will not matter if you work hard. All through Year 11 and 12, I didn't know what scaling even was. Which benefited me greatly, because I picked subjects I absolutely loved, even though they all scaled down and I still did great. If you work hard enough in all your subjects and never give up, you will do the best you can and thus are not allowed to have any regrets.

My final words to all of you are, no one is naturally gifted, talented or intelligent. It is the work you do, the sacrifices you make and the person you chose to be, that will take you where you want to go. School is not a competition with the person sitting next to you, it is a competition against yourself. Be kind, respectful and a person you'd want to have around.

Thank you.

Matilda

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