Right choices
The month of September has flown by and we have now passed the Autumn equinox. The familiar routines of school life have kicked in, punctuated by moments of excitement – the PGL trip for Year 7, the Into the Sixth event for Year 11, and sending UCAS applications off for Upper Sixth students.
Spending time reading personal statements (a bit like a covering letter for university) and teacher references with each girl can be a rather moving process. All her time at South Hampstead condensed into 4000 characters. Statements and references have been a joy to read.
At the other end of the scale, teaching Philosophy to all of our Year 7 girls and getting to know them reminds me of the elasticity of time. On the one hand I know that time will fly and they too will one day be sitting on my sofa reading their UCAS references. But on the other hand that seems an eternity away. It’s hard to tell at this stage in what direction they will fly, and how their experiences in the next seven years will shape their personalities and interests.
Pupils have lots of choices to make in school – about which subjects to study, which activities to pursue, which friendships to cultivate. When it comes to subject choices specifically, I have found over the years I have been helping girls choose GCSE, A Level and degree courses, that they can sometimes worry about making the ‘wrong choice’. Or they believe that there is one perfect choice out there.
Of course not all choices will work for all pupils, but most of the time the best way of looking at things is this: lots of right choices, very few wrong ones. The key is what you make of your choices. At various stages of my life I wanted to be Heidi, a ballerina, a detective, a diplomat, a solicitor, an academic and finally a teacher. I think I would have been really happy doing several of those jobs. Lots of right choices (although Peter the Goatherd may not have been quite my cup of tea…)
The next generation may well have several different careers as they go through life. The idea of one right choice written in the stars seems even less relevant to them. At this stage of their lives, they should be keeping their brains plastic and embracing lots of different opportunities. And it is our mission to provide them with these.
Blog post by Vicky Bingham, Headmistress from 2017 to 2023.