Batons have been passed in lots of ways around the school in recent months. Whether it has been our outgoing Senior Prefect Kevin Stathis (ON 2014) making his last address to the College then giving up his seat at the front of the assembly to Saahil Parekh (11/MO), or the changes of the faces on boys turning up to sports trainings in new age groups each afternoon, there is a different feel to a school in Term 4.

These batons have also been passed a lot between boys in their academic lives this Term. As our Class of 2014 have sat in silence in Centenary Hall or Concordia in their final HSC and IB exams, the Year 11 boys have quietly (but purposefully) become the Class of 2015. Year 10, now completing the last of their Annual Exams, is thinking more about being in Year 11 and the challenges of their final two years at the College. Things that were a long way away, are suddenly much closer.

Many boys holding batons firmly in their hands were recently in the Old Boys Lecture Theatre, (all wondering as to the best way to carry them), to hear a range of speakers look at the experience of being in Year 12 and how to get the best out of it (and themselves). While the final 12 months of school was the focus of the evening, so much of what was discussed holds true irrespective of where someone is in their journey through high school.

It didn’t seem to matter how we looked at it, there was always a view that success at school came down to finding the right balance, something that we talk about a lot at Newington. From a purely academic point of view, a balance between the types of subjects boys select when they get the choices in their own curriculum is important. Getting that mix right in balancing work efforts between what is going to be handed in and marked, and what is something that you need to do because your teacher thought it was in your best interests.

In a practical sense, there is the matter of balance in how you approach study; about how you prioritise the demands on your time, weigh the efforts across your range of subjects and assessments, and how to balance the way you spend your time when you sit down to work on your own. Spending more time studying is rarely productive if there is no balance in the types of approaches you use to revise, learn and apply what you know in any given session.

Significantly, there is the important balance between how we would like to spend our time and how we sometimes need to spend our time, in order to get the best from ourselves. Balancing the distractions that draw us away from our studies with the quality time we need to get things done is a challenge. Turning off Facebook, gaming, and the lures of that remastered edition of Top Gun (or is that just my life!?) until we have done the work we said we would, and achieved the things we said we could, is one of the hardest balances to achieve; but, it’s one worth working towards.

It can be hard to appreciate that balance is important at a time of year full of examinations and the first rounds of HSC assessment tasks. However, especially at this time of year, learning how to balance the pressures and efforts that are part of this end of an academic year is not a bad lesson in and of itself (even if there is no question on it in the exam).

Mr Trent Driver
Deputy Head of Stanmore (Academic)