Full School Assembly
At our recent Full School Assembly we had past student, Gemma Gadd come back and talk to the students on Academic Excellence.
Gemma Gadd was Dux of the College in 2000.
Before I talk about my time at Assumption, I'd like to give you some background on what it is that I do.
I work for The Weekly Times; it's a national newspaper, based in Melbourne. We are the largest paper of our type in Australia with a readership of more than 300,000 people.
It's a privilege to be charged with the responsibility of writing to such a large readership about the issues that affect us all. But, undoubtedly, the best thing about my job is the access it gives me to places and people I never would have come into contact with otherwise.
As a journalist, I've shared the stories of some of our brightest people; our academics, our leaders, our best business brains, our elite sportsmen and women and also a lot of very ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
My job also puts me in some pretty tricky situations and I've covered some heartbreaking stories; the Black Saturday bushfires, last summer's floods across Victoria and the Kerang rail disaster to name a few.
I've sat with people who have lost everything, people on the brink of financial ruin, emotionally flattened, and then chartered their return back from the brink.
And so, if there is one thing this job has taught me, it's that every body has a story.
When I came to Assumption as a boarder in 1998, I was just a kid from the bush who no one had ever heard of - I am a farmer’s daughter from a small town called Walwa - and now I write to hundreds of thousands of people every day. There have been quite a few pages in my story between now and then, each of them filled with the experiences, the people and places that have helped to define who I am. I wrote a few chapters in this school because it was here that found my strengths in English and Media Studies and have since built a career out of them.
I want you to consider for a moment your own story. And in the story you are both the protagonist - the hero - and the writer. Now, the most successful people I’ve met and the greatest stories I've shared have all had some key elements in common. These people have also all sat where you are sitting right now. So, pick up the pen and start with this:
• First, a goal. Every story needs one. Without a goal or a dream, your story will languish and your reader will lose interest.
• Now you've got a goal, you'll need the motivation to get it, something to drive your narrative and keep it on track.
• Then you'll need some challenges, some big and small hurdles which will not only give your character the opportunity to shine but also a chance to test yourself and to develop depth, grit and guts. All heroes have these things.
• Keeping that in mind, you had better plan for some milestones, achievements to punctuate the end of each chapter with. These high points will give your story colour and your character the self belief to go on.
• But to these you'll have to add some disappointments, and perhaps even some mistakes, for without these there can be no learning, no growth and no appreciation for what we already have.
• With all this writing, you'll need balance - it might be sport, art, music or community service - to make your character multi-dimensional and to give you and your reader a chance to reflect.
• You'll also need some twists and turns, some forks in the road, big decisions to make and risks to take, these are what make stories and characters interesting and will keep your reader involved.
• Every story has supporting characters, people that love you, teach you and lead your character through difficult times. Find those people and write them in.
• Finally, you'll need a big, strong voice to carry this story, one loud enough to drown out the naysayers and the self doubt we all get from time to time.
• And when you get to the end of this story and you have worked hard in here to create the opportunities you have enjoyed out there, and you are the outspoken leader, the high-flying professional, the political heavyweight, the successful business owner, or an advocate for those who can’t, call me. Because yours will be a story worth telling and I know just the journalist to tell it.
I’d like to leave you with this thought. In 143 years of continuous print, The Weekly Times has never printed a blank page, we've never missed a deadline, never failed to get our paper to the presses, on to the trucks, out to the mail boxes and in to the homes, hands and hearts of the people that read our paper and keep us in business.
Presumably that’s because we've got great journalists to write the stories, great photographers to take the pictures, great designers to make it look good, editors to keep us on track, engineers to keep the presses rolling, drivers to move the paper all over the country and mailmen to deliver the paper to your door. But all of that counts for nothing if we haven't got anything to write about. We are always looking for the next big thing. And that next big thing could be you.
This is only just the beginning of your story, how it ends and where it takes you between now and then is entirely up to you.
Best of luck to you all, especially our year 12 students, and thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.