Captains Corner

National Young Leaders Day Conference

On Wednesday 23rd of March, the school captains and Miss Epskamp travelled on a train into the city. We went to the Melbourne Convention Centre to participate in Halogen’s National Young Leaders Day. Everyone there had a great day and it was an amazing bonding experience. There were four speakers which are all successful Australian leaders. Below you will see a paragraph from each of the captains describing their individual experience with each speaker.

Lachie Smart - Isobel

The first speaker, Lachie Smart is an Australian leader, who holds the record as the youngest person to fly solo in a single engine aircraft around the world. Last week, at the National Young Leaders Day Conference, he told us about all the ways that he used leadership, to achieve that record. He also taught us some lessons such as; you should never be afraid to fail or make mistakes, and that you can do almost anything if you sent your mind to it. If you believe that you can do it, and if you persist with doing it, you WILL succeed. When Lachie Smart planned his flight around the world, he had to make some hard decisions. When he tried getting sponsors for his flight, he tried being ‘cool’, like his friends but no-one would sponsor him. When he tried acting as himself, he obtained sponsors and was able to achieve what he set out to do. 

Guy Edmonds - Lexi

Another speaker was Guy Edmonds who had a lot of career choice. Guy made a very successful book called ‘Zoo Crew’ and another popular TV series called ‘Hardball’ which he not only wrote and produced but he acted in it. A lesson that Guy taught us was to lead with laughter. He told us to take what you do seriously but don't take yourself too seriously. Guy Edmonds also explained his setbacks. For him, yes was never the first answer. He sent copies of a book that never came out to every single publishing company in Australia and every single one said no that they did not want to be part of it. The last thing he taught us is that if you show persistence you can do anything.

Cate Campbell - Josh

I would like to share with you about the third speaker at the National Young Leaders Day Conference. Her name was Cate Campbell. Cate Campbell has won eight Olympic medals as a swimmer. She is well known and has been on television several times representing our country. Even though she is a motivator for many, she inspired herself by copying her younger sister, Bronte. Through frustration of not getting any awards, she stole her sister’s medals and hid them under her bed.  Her mother eventually found out and told her that if she wanted to get trophies and medals, she had to work hard like her sister did.

There was one time when she woke up on the morning of the Olympic swimming competition and suffered with a pain in her neck. Whilst she was practising her laps, she could not turn her neck due to pain and had to wear a snorkel while swimming. When she was approaching the final, the pain was still there. Then she remembered what she always said when she was getting ready to swim, ‘Be brave’. She said in her talk, that to be brave you must get out of your comfort zone. To be brave you will need to do new, exciting and scary things. She shares the same values as we should show at DPS, determination, pride and success. 

Damien Fleming - Weihan 

The next speaker we heard from was Damien Fleming. Damien Fleming is a famous cricket player who won the World Cup. He taught us a valuable message that you should not be the best in the room. If you are, you will not be able to learn anything from anyone. Another lesson taught by him was in life, there will always be some setbacks. However, the way to overcome these is to learn from our mistakes. You also have to be prepared to listen to others opinions. If you do, you could realise that they could be right and that you might agree with them. We also learnt that in order to be successful, there will always be sacrifices. If we want to be the best we can be, we must make some sacrifices.

As you can see, we learnt a lot of lessons from these speakers, and they inspired us to be the best leaders we can be. On our trip, we didn’t only get lots of great tips from the speakers, but we also had a great time bonding together and enjoying each-others company while having this unique experience.