From the 2022 Senior School Captains: Looking Forward to 2022

Tara S and Nicholas C | 2022 Senior School Captains | Grammar News |11 February 2022

2022 has already been quite the year, and we're not even six weeks in. It’s been a year that the current Year 12 class have been sporting on the end of our emails since Year 7, a constant reminder of that distant thing called Graduation. It’s the sort of feeling, if our readers recall, of arriving at October 21, 2015 and seeing just how different reality is from Marty McFly’s 1989 trip to the future (although Slovakia did just certify the world’s first flying car, so maybe we weren’t that far off). It is, indeed, impossible to imagine the unexpected moments and blessings of a future that you have not yet experienced, impossible to control for certain the course of events that will shape your life. And thus there remains but one thing to do: Build our futures with the bricks that are our days, carrying kindness and purpose through each moment of our lives. 

But where is this sudden onset of philosophical life-coaching coming from? What has inspired us to so brazenly burden you with such overdone, obsolete platitudes? The Winter Olympics, of course. As the crème de la crème of the Alpine world Left Double 1620 (Eileen Gu, anyone?) work their way into our hearts, it is impossible not to goggle at the immense amount of skill, dedication and sheer time that has gone into their attempts. Lindsay Jacobellis, for one, achieved Gold in the Women’s Snowboard Cross this Wednesday. Impressive in and of itself, it is a title sought after by Jacobellis for 16 years, since her first appearance at Turin, 2006.

As some may know, Jacobellis was in the lead, soaring over the final jump, when she attempted a victory grab that didn’t land, tumbled off the course and had to settle for Silver. Now, five Olympic Winter Games later, she wins Gold at age 36. Jacobellis’ story is just one of the countless others that crop up this time of year. They remind us of the importance of goal setting, of sticking to your passions and following through, no matter what. They remind us to be humble, hardworking and full of grace. In a much more mellow way, their gruelling, freezing training routines require the same sort of dedication that catching the early bus every morning to School does, that choosing to honour your commitments to sport and music, even when it interferes with other things, does. But ultimately, these stories remind us to look ahead to the future without steadfast, unflinching expectations but rather with a dream to pursue and the daily commitment to pursuing it. 

So, as we travel through this year, let us not focus on the unknowns and the 'what-ifs', but rather commit ourselves to living each day with purpose. Try new things, move outside your comfort zone, have no regrets.