Welcome back, it was so lovely to greet everyone at the start of term even if the weather decided not to co-operate, changing from edging into Summer on Sunday to Winter on Monday!
Although summer means so many different things to different people, ranging from strawberries to tennis, sunshine to athletics, festivals and study leave, interestingly so many of our pupils have talked to me about summer meaning exams. In a school with so many talented pupils, I wanted to focus my first assembly on the importance of every pupil running their own race, celebrating their own journey and not comparing themselves to anyone else – because there is no one like you.
I took the case of Jasmin Paris who managed to be the first woman to complete the extraordinary Barkley Marathon, a 100 mile race with five laps, which you can read about here. There are no signposts – contestants memorise the route which changes every lap. Each lap is between 20 and 26 miles and the race has over 16,500 metres of vertical climb. The competitors only know the day the race is run; the actual time is determined by the race official blowing a conch to signal an hour to the start. The race is run over 5 days and 60 hours is the finishing time, after which you are not allowed to finish. Only 17 runners previously have finished the race, one of whom was Jasmin Paris.
Jasmin Paris finished the event in 59:58:21, just 99 seconds inside the cut-off time, which is extraordinary. In her interview with the press afterwards, Jasmin credited the support of the crowd and those around her for her success and encouraged anyone ‘whatever their adventure, believe in yourself’.
Those two key principles, I believe, are at the heart of our school too. Whatever they do, whatever new challenge they set themselves, every pupil needs to believe in what they can do and stop looking over their shoulders at others to run their own race. There is no doubt that Jasmin wouldn’t have completed or probably even started if she kept looking over her shoulder or at others. Indeed she only had male role models to compare herself to. This probably made it much easier not to compare and highlights the importance, and in some ways, the absurdity of comparing oneself to others in the classroom. Using the support around you to enable you to achieve, to find your own unique and authentic self is at the heart of our school.
Run your own race – indeed.
Ad Lucem,
Mrs Gardiner Legge