Once upon a 2017 time there was a young Year 9 student named Amberly Orr who attended Queen’s High School. She started off shy but as the year went on she began rapping and she is now grateful that none of you remember this as you weren’t here. Over the next four years Amberly changed into now me, and is going to show you today the importance in growth of how you handle certain situations in order to give you a hopefully healthier outlook on life.

This is where I started *see pictures me each year above*. Hopefully you’re thinking wow she looks so different and thank goodness she cut her hair because that was not a look. Back in Year 9 my biggest insecurity was probably what I looked like, but when you’re 13 you don’t really know that nobody actually cares about what you look like. I was pretty confident waltzing around school as a cool Year 9, I knew I could be annoying but that didn’t stop me from putting myself out there. Whilst having a confident exterior, I was still always thinking about the few people that maybe didn’t like me. In order to get rid of that thought I learned to stop trying to impress everyone. And accept that I’m not going to be everyone’s friend. It took me a while to learn this because it’s hard to just stop caring about all the bad things people could think of you but once you can get past that you allow yourself to be a lot more grateful for the friends you have. In Year 9, I was probably too focused on trying to please everyone rather than acknowledging the people that were always there for me which I can now proudly say I do.

Something I am still learning is to take care of myself. To avoid sadness from exhaustion you need to make time to chill out and do something that isn’t school or work. For example some things you can do are just dance, go to a beach at night time and lie on the sand, go to Mitre 10 and look at all the paint swatches or sit in your backyard and listen to Taylor Swift. I have found these activities to be very helpful in giving my head a break from trying to understand physics while also trying to learn how plants work in bio. A big part of taking care of yourself is acknowledging yourself for how far you have come on whatever journey you are on. Whatever your goals are you can be proud of where you have got to and what you have achieved even if it’s not what you had planned, you’ve still done something to lead you in the right direction of your goals.

From what I have said to you today, hopefully you can take away some advice on how to give yourself a healthier outlook on some things. I know that a lot more change will come as I grow older but when I look back on myself now, I know to be less critical. When my snapchat memories show up each day - sure I may regret saving videos of me trying to sing from four years ago as I relive it each year - but I know that at this moment I am happy with who I am, I can see how much I have grown and that I am proud of who I now am.

Thank you

Amberly